


Identity

by Macx



Series: Imperfection Deviation [57]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-27
Updated: 2009-09-27
Packaged: 2017-10-19 06:32:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macx/pseuds/Macx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a glacier in Iceland a crashed protoform is discovered by an expedition team. The identity is unknown, but hopes are high, but first they have to save it from permanent shut-down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Identity

**Author's Note:**

> This bunny is Sapphire's fault, who I traveled to Iceland with. While driving through the volcanic landscape we figured that the mechs could easily hide there... or crashland and never be discovered. :)

 

Vatnajökull. The glacier of water.

Located in the south-east of the island of Iceland, covering more than eight percent of the country, it is an impressive sight. A gleaming white landscape that, upon closer inspection is riddled with cracks and deep lacerations, is far from smooth, and the whiteness is actually far from just white. Volcanic ash and sand is enclosed in the eternal ice, giving the glacier darker streaks. Air bubbles and debris are locked inside. With a size of 8100 square kilometers it is the largest glacier of Europe.

 

Throughout tourist season people hiked, climbed, drove past or flew over the massive formation. It was a magnet for everyone visiting the northern island. With the end of summer silence descended once more, though.

It was in late September that Dr. Einar Magnusson and his team started on their expedition to explore a specific area of the glacier. He irregularly took students and part of his science team up on glacier walks that would push everyone, even science, to their limits. They would set up camp near a central service station town and fly to their sites each day. The very hardy spent one or two nights in heavily insulated tents up on the glacier as long as weather permitted.

On this expedition the team consisted of only four people, including Magnusson, and none was a student. They were all senior scientists and glacier experts. He was looking for traces of Earth’s history in glacial ice and his aim was to remove ice core probes and get them back to his lab. The plan was to take five probes out of four different locations. The first had already been successfully handled and the six foot long tubes, about five inches in diameter, had been shipped back to the lab. Inside was a perfect vertical slice through the ice.  
The helicopter set them down as planned and the men and one woman went to work.

It was near dusk that one of his men, Dr. Lars Sveinsson, called him over. He sounded excited. And not just that. Also perturbed. Maybe even a little scared.

The others gathered, too, and what Magnusson saw let him gape.

Underneath a thin layer of crystal clear glacial ice was... metal. A long stretch of metal that first reminded him of the wreck of an old fighter plane, but then Magnusson frowned more. Of course planes had crashed in Iceland throughout World War II, but he had never heard of any speculation that it could have been up here. And the ‘wreckage’ looked too futuristic to be an old war plane from that time.

“Einar?” his colleague asked, unsure.

“Call the base. We need a chopper up here at first light,” he decided.

Until then they would cordon off the area, mark the place of the strange metal inclusion.

Out of a whim he scraped snow off a covered area and Dr. Becca Asmundsdottir, their only female team member, a renowned professor at the University of Reykjavik, gave an exclamation of surprise as she ran the flashlight over the place.

The metal continued. It wasn’t just the two by two foot area, it was a lot bigger. A lot! Everyone started clearing snow off the ice until they stood panting in the cold, breath frosting before their faces.

“What is this?” Lars whispered, looking frightened.

Magnusson didn’t know. He could only stare at the roughly spherical shape under the ice.

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“I don’t need a vacation!” Sam said forcefully.

Ratchet’s expression was unyielding. “You have been under a lot of mental pressure lately, Sam. Helping the Constructicons tired you out and you need to recharge.”

“I’m not a mech, Ratchet, and you’re not a human doctor. You’re not my doctor!”

“But I am,” a very human voice said and Dr. Mark Keyron frowned at the younger man. “Ratchet is right. You’re tired out, even if you don’t feel it yet. You need some time away from all of this and a vacation would do you good.”

Sam rolled his eyes. They would probably have brought in his parents if they hadn’t decided to go on a month-long trip to Europe. His mother had called it their ‘romantic vacation’, his father had complained about the airline charging horrendous prices for first class and he wasn’t about to pay for it, even if Judy insisted.

::Sam, please?:: Bumblebee sent. ::You feel tired to me::

“Now you’re being unfair,” the technopath growled and directed a new glare at the yellow and black Autobot behind him.

“I have a very unique connection to you,” Bumblebee added, sounding just a little bit smug.

“I’m okay! I don’t need to relax!” He looked into the three stern faces. “And I’m not winning this one, right?”

“No,” Keyron told him. “Get away from technology, Sam. Let your brain recover. You helped five severely injured minds and you had multiple migraines. You need this time out.”

Sam threw up his hands in defeat. “Okay, okay. Do I at least get to choose?”

Bumblebee shrugged. “Of course.”

“Fine! I’ll pack.” With that he whirled around, steaming off.

Ratchet whirred a sigh. “Humans can be so stubborn.”

Keyron chuckled. “You have no idea.”

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Bumblebee followed his charge into the house the technopath had on base – one big enough for Bumblebee to comfortably enter in his bipedal mode -- reaching out to the upset mind.

::Sam?::

::Leave me alone!::

::You know you need to unwind::

::I am unwinding! Every time we’re together!::

Bumblebee radiated amusement. ::That’s a different unwinding. This is about letting your mind relax, be away from temptation::

Sam stopped in the process of stuffing various articles of clothing into a duffel. Narrowed eyes pinned the Autobot.

“Temptation? You want to send me off alone?”

“No.” Bumblebee knelt down, feeling the waves of upset and betrayal. “I know you want to be useful and you are. You’re very important to us, Sam. Even more to me. You know that. Giving in to the need to be away for a while is no weakness. What you did for the Constructicons was incredible. It was beyond what anyone thought you’d be able to endure.”

Sam looked away. Gentle metal fingers touched his face, forcing him to look into the understanding optics.

“You need this, Sam. We need this.”

He cupped the large finger with his hand, feeling the smooth, alien metal under his touch.

“We?”

“Yes, we.”

He breathed in slowly, then let it go in a calming exhalation. “We,” he echoed. “Bee…”

Bumblebee’s presence flowed around him in a very real hug and Sam closed his eyes, enjoying the simple expression of togetherness.

Them. Yes, they needed time away. He had felt it. He had been tense, he had been prone to migraines more often from simple things, and touching Bumblebee hadn’t been as smooth and familiar as before. He needed to get everything into order once more.

“Any suggestions?” he asked his partner, looking into the bright optics.

Bumblebee gave a hum of amusement. “I can think of a few remote places where technology isn’t very pronounced.”

Sam smiled. “I’m ready to be surprised.”

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The room was filled with electronic equipment top to bottom, artfully hidden underneath smooth panels. Huge viewscreens formed a semi-circle around the main control station and up on the opposite wall a display the size of a theater screen relayed the most vital information. Different screens showed different times, locations, data streams, and alerts. People moved efficiently, typing, talking on phones, sitting together and going over matters, and in the middle of it a dark-skinned, heavy-set man in his early thirties regarded the condensed version of what the men and women had collected so far.

An alarm went off. Silent, just a screen turning red and catching the attention of the controller close by.

Commands were typed in.

There was a brief waiting period, then the typing was faster, more serious.

The heavy-set man walked over to the screen and leaned over the controller’s shoulder. He whistled softly as an image appeared, taken by a digital camera no more than twelve hours ago.

“Track it,” he ordered.

“On it,” the controller replied.

“YouTube?”

“Nothing yet. It’s an official site. Glacial Expedition.”

He nodded. “Confirm this, then block whatever else they’re trying to send anywhere.”

“Got it.”

 

Two hours later a call was made to Tom Banachek, head of Project.

 

Another three hours after that international relations with Iceland took on a different tone.

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If there was one thing to be grateful for it was the early darkness falling over the country of Iceland at this time of the year. Where the sun would have been out twenty-four hours a day by mid-May to late July, it now turned dark quite early. At six in the evening dusk had not even stood a chance. Darkness had simply fallen over the land.

The C-17 transport landing at the small international airport of Keflavik would have aroused suspicion with the casual tourist or traveler. Now it was the last plane coming in for the day, its lights flickering over the dark tarmac. It rolled to a stop at the other end of the airfield, away from the terminals, and opened its massive rear cargo doors. The interior had been kept in semi-darkness and even if there had been watchers, they wouldn’t have seen more than four large shapes drive out, then the doors closed again.

The four vehicles disappeared into the night, headlights off. Only when they were on the official road leading from the airport did lights come on.

Nothing about them looked suspicious. Not even their license plates which were of an Icelandic origin.

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Since Iceland had no standing Army or Airforce it had been a bit more complicated for Project to use the right channels to smooth the way for the reconnaissance team. Banachek had talked to the President, who had in turn, with the Department of Defense, had had long talks with the Icelandic prime minister. It had taken almost too long to clear their arrival and until then police had apprehended the science team that had been up on the glacier to discover something that might prove to be extraordinary.

That the discovery had even made it as far as Banachek’s desk was thanks to Gene Whitman. The former hacker and now employee of the DoD and Project had turned out to be the chief asset in a hunt for possible clues to new-arrivals on Earth, hidden Decepticons and other strange events that could be attributed to a Cybertronian on Earth. He surfed the net in a way no one else did. Together with Maggie Madsen he had developed a program he called Seeker. The Seeker was going through uncountable files all around the world each hour, looking for keywords, images, clues, and stored it all in a place where Maggie, Gene and their team of twenty individuals could go through it, always searching for the one thing: Cybertronian presence.

A third of the team was assigned the task to obscure or ridicule what appeared real. They were the Cleaners. They cleaned up messes. They found out names and server IDs, and relayed them to the DoD teams. The rest was hunting. One of the hunts had come up with red flags. Screaming red flags and images that were too detailed, too fresh, to be a hoax.

Whitman had alerted Maggie. Maggie in turn had given the go-ahead to inform Banchek, and twelve hours later a massive machinery had begun to move.

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Ironhide drove down the dark ring road number 1, headlights piercing the night around them. Now and then a car came toward them, driving past without knowing who they were. All four vehicles were easily breaking the speed limit of 90 km/h, but none of them cared. It was a few hours after their arrival that Ironhide skillfully maneuvered onto the unpaved road that led them into the unpopulated highlands. The roads got rougher, but his shocks easily handled the blows. He grumbled a little about the abuse, just for the show of it, and it earned him a brief smile from the man in his cab. Otherwise his passenger didn’t protest.

Followed by two black Ford F-350 Explorers and Ratchet bringing up the rear, the small convoy drove fast and didn’t stop until they had reached the end of the highland road. The F-902 ended abruptly, petering out into nothing but rocks. Surrounded by the massive glacial tongues of the Dyngjujökull to the right and the smaller Kverkjökull to the left the men and women of Epps’ unit piled out of the their cars and the two mechs transformed.

Ratchet’s lights brightened the area, though they did nothing to make the surroundings more hospitable. Ironhide added his own source of light.

Ex-Army Major Will Lennox gazed around. It looked like a different planet here. All mountains and rocks and glacial ice. He had been to many places, foreign and at home, but this was something that could very well fit into a science fiction movie. Behind him Epps ordered the camp to be prepared and the fifteen soldiers quickly did so. Tents were set up and communication with the base at home established.

“Thirty miles from here,” Lennox said softly, eyes on the massive wall of whiteness.

Heavy steps shook the earth and he looked up at his partner. Ironhide, if not for the lights, would have disappeared completely in the night. Only the lit-up headlights and his blue optics gave reference to his size and where he was at the moment.

“It’ll be morning soon,” he rumbled. “There will be no non-military fly-overs tomorrow. Forecast looks in our favor.”

Lennox nodded. It would be cloudy for most of the day, which meant no non-commercial flights would try and shuttle the odd tourist that had caught a cheapo flight off-season over Iceland’s biggest glacier. Commercial flights starting from Keflavik were no bother at all. They followed the coast line and would be above the Atlantic by the time they passed the south-east.

Feeling the need to move around, explore, Will did just that. His eyes were pretty well adjusted to the meager light. He had no optics, he had no human optical nerves, he was a hybrid. He had a mixture of both.

Ironhide remained at the camp, showing how much he trusted in his partner not to do anything foolish. Will only walked for about a mile and then settled with his back against a rough stone. He breathed in deeply, feeling the crisp clear air in his lungs.

Lennox had come along on this operation because this was exactly the mission he could do such a thing: come along. No hiding, no chance of discovery. Iceland was so sparsely populated, with the mass of people living in Reykjavik, that he had a measure of freedom like never before. He needed this, needed to get out, and Canada had shown he could. Canada had been under heavy guard and only at night or in enclosed spaces; Iceland meant a new freedom.

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When Ironhide joined him, his lights switched off, finding his way with sure steps, the camp had already settled down to catch a few hours of sleep. Will didn’t feel sleepy. He had caught what he needed on their flight here and he rarely slept every night. He didn’t need to.

Ironhide settled down beside him.

“First time I’m really somewhere I can move about freely,” Lennox said after a while.

Canada had meant hiding, too. Wherever people were, he couldn’t be. In this place, in this country actually, running into crowds was… not happening. Aside from busses full of tourists or going to a party in town, it was a very lonely place. Up here, in the highlands, even more so. They could be here for months and no one would notice.

He looked up into the dark face of his partner and bonded. “Perfect for retirement,” he quipped.

Ironhide chuckled. “Right.”

Lennox leaned against the armored foot, abandoning the rock for the closeness of another kind, and Ironhide let him. Nothing more was spoken between them until the sun rose through the thick cloud cover.

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With dawn came meager sunlight and the camp broke up into different groups. Three soldiers would remain behind to monitor communications, keep in touch with the base back home and everyone who now went onto the glacier. A Chinook helicopter had arrived and lifted everyone, including the two Autobots, to the target area thirty miles from the camp. The military helicopter would stay in touch and hide in the highlands. A second one was close by, on call, should it be needed.

Walking on the cold, hard and slippery surface wasn’t easy for anyone. The soldiers had attached spikes to their boots and the two mechs had adjusted the soles of their feet accordingly.

When they finally closed in on the marked site of the strange discovery Gene had picked up, Ratchet made a surprised noise that was echoed by Ironhide. Of course the images taken by the group of explorers had been sharp. They had shown a metallic object, but the distortion from the ice had made it difficult to actually identify it.

Now they saw it for themselves.

It was a protoform. There was no doubt about. Locked in its transition mode, a roughly spherical construction with a large protrusion on one end. Anyone who might have seen it come down all that time ago would have believed it to be a meteor. The space debris and dust that usually covered such modes was still visible. Covered by a layer of crystal clear ice it was now lit up by powerful lights and surrounded by two of its kind and a team of Epps’ men, as well as Lennox.

Ratchet scanned the enclosed sphere and made a humming noise. “Taking into account the age of this glacial field, as well as the past sightings of meteorites – none even remotely in this area – I think the protoform has been here for a while now.”

“How long?” Epps asked.

“At least three thousand years, maybe more.”

The captain whistled. “Damn. Any way to tell if it’s one of the good guys or one of the bad guys?”

“No. Transition modes as well as protoforms don’t bear sigils. There are ways to identify the individual though. First we have to remove the protoform.”

Epps nodded. “Okay. You guys tell us where to dig, we dig.”

Ratchet smiled a little, then set up a new scan, this one to determine how best to remove the sphere from the ice surrounding it.

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Will stood in the averse weather, gaze locked on the unearthed – or was that un-iced? – transition mode of a protoform that they still hadn’t been able to identify. It had taken them a week to get it safely out of the ice, mainly due to two factors: the ice and the weather. A storm had laid them off for two days and made their work harder afterwards. Even with small explosive charges set at a safe distance to their precious discovery and both Ratchet and Ironhide helping, it had been difficult to remove the protective mantle of ice.

Wind blew around him, bitingly cold. The clouds hung low enough to be fog and visibility was close to nil. Lennox should be in a warm tent, sitting with the others, eating, talking about who the mech they had found could be, but he wasn’t. He watched Ratchet and Ironhide work.

The medic wasn’t happy about the state of the foundling. So low on energon there was barely a reading, he had concluded that when the protoform had crashed he had already been in stasis lock, deep enough not to rouse for any reason unless someone from outside repaired him, gave him energon.

Ironhide’s expression was dark, darker than usual, and he had once or twice remarked that from the looks of it, the mech found had been in battle, maybe fled from Cybertron throughout the final stages of the war. That meant he had been in space for a long, long time, and crashed onto Earth thousands of years ago, as confirmed by the age of the ice surrounding it. Maybe the transition mode had followed an energy signature.

For now they had no explanation who he was and what had happened to him.

Will walked over to the sphere and reached out with bare hands, running his finger tips over the scarred looking exterior. Protoforms were supremely resistant to damage, capable of withstanding extreme heat or cold, and they were the core of every Cybertronian. This one had seen its share of battle and to scar it so badly, the fight must have gone way beyond the mech’s limit.

The runes were docile on his hands as he touched the alien metal cocoon. He couldn’t jolt anything to life, he couldn’t give energon or do whatever the Allspark had been able to. He wasn’t the Allpark.

Of course he had abilities, like withstanding heat and cold himself. He didn’t need the protective gear the others were wearing. He could be up here, in the glacial cold of Iceland’s nearing winter in jeans and a t-shirt and not feel the cold, but Will was maintaining his human habits. He had put on the same things as Epps’ team. That he was now gloveless, that he had removed the hood of his jacket and the thermal head protection wear, was due to the fact that he was alone with the two mechs.

Ratchet muttered a soft curse. “We have to get him out of here fast. Whatever keeps him alive, it’s fading. He’s in such a deep coma, I fear feeding him energon could shock him into off-lining. This will be delicate work.”

Ironhide flexed his fingers. “What if it’s a Con?”

“We don’t know that, Ironhide. If he is a Decepticon there is still stasis. A stasis we induce, not one that came about due to massive damage and system failures.”

Another rumble.

Will walked around the sphere, joining his partner. He stuffed his hands into the jacket’s pockets, letting the wind whip through his hair. Both silently watched Ratchet work until the sun came up, piercing the darkness with weak stabs of light. Epps had crawled out of his tent an hour earlier, muttering about cold weather.

“Airlift is coming in. ETA two hours,” he now said as one of his men relayed the information.

Will nodded. They would get the sphere off the glacier and back to the base camp site where they had to wait until two Chinook helicopters could take the massive form back to Keflavik to the waiting C-17. The plane was currently on its way back from US territory and would arrive on time.

“Man, I hate cold,” Epps grumbled.

Lennox, still without anything protecting his head and looking comfortable and warm despite the arctic temperatures, smiled. “Warm thoughts, Rob.”

“Warm my ass. Speaking of which, it’s freezing off,” the captain growled. “And you’re freakin’ me out,” he added, giving Lennox a glare.

The Ex-Army Ranger chuckled. He knew where his oldest friend came from and he also knew that Epps didn’t mean it as an insult.

“Just be glad I’m not in my tee and undies.”

“Oh, weird me out some more, will ya! That’s really not normal, man.”

“What can I say? Freaky alien accidents do that to a guy.”

They shared a grin and Epps gave him a clap on the shoulder. He walked back to where his men were preparing for the brief cargo flight. Ironhide’s blue optics glowed softly in the dawn light as he watched his partner. Will shot him a reassuring grin and went back to inspecting the sphere.

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Two hours later the Chinook blew up a storm of snow and ice as it hovered over the landing site of the protoform. Experienced soldiers attached the heavy lift gear and within twenty minutes the sphere was raised from the Vatnajökull and airlifted to the base site thirty miles away.

In the silence that followed their departure Will closed his eyes, feeling the snow on his face. He inhaled the frigid air and released it with a soft sigh.

There was a certain freedom in this vastness, this icy landscape. Behind him Ratchet had already transformed and drove across a surface that no normal car could ever manage to navigate. Epps and his men were gone with the Chinook. There were only two people left, one a hybrid human, one a mechanoid life form.

Ironhide joined his partner, silent, giving Will time. Finally Lennox opened his eyes and looked at the alien mechanoid. He smiled.

“Let’s go,” he said softly.

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The secret military unit disappeared as fast as they had come, flying into the night. Icelandic authorities were taking care of the four scientists. National security was understood even by the three men and one woman and nothing of their findings would leak to the public. Nothing at all.

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“He’s in a bad condition,” Ratchet reported to Optimus Prime.

He was parked in the same C-17 transporter as the sphere had been stowed in, accompanied by half of Epps’ unit. The rest was in the second plane that followed at a distance, including Will and Ironhide.

“His energon readings are abysmal. If not for the fact that he somehow managed to revert into the transition mode, he would have off-lined ages ago. None of his peripheral systems are working and when I tried to access his systems I stumbled over so many dead and crumbling connections, I almost did more harm than good.”

“Do you think he can be saved?” the Prime wanted to know.

“I can’t say right now,” was Ratchet’s honest answer.

“Try.”

“I will, Optimus. You know I will. No matter who he turns out to be.”

Because Ratchet was foremost a medic and it meant saving lives, no matter what faction, when he could. He would kill in battle, but he wouldn’t execute, nor would be turn away from the dying or needy. This protoform was both: dying and needy. He might be able to bring him back, but maybe the shock of a reboot would kill the spark.

He had to wait and see.

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They landed eight hours later at the Autobot base in Nevada. Humans and bots swarmed around the C-17 with its special cargo and hidden under a heavy tarp draped over the transition mode, the new-comer was whisked into the hangar.

The transport planes disappeared just as quickly to land at Nellis to get refueled and serviced.

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Ratchet had seen a lot of injuries in his time. And death. So many deaths. Some violent, some quick, some slow, some agonizing, some merciful. He had always tried to safe whoever was under his care, but you could never save them all. He knew that. Even back on Cybertron at the height of the war he had known, but he had never given up.

Torn off limbs could be replaced. Internal damage could be repaired as long as the spark was alive. Even a spark could be saved if there was enough of it left. But some just didn’t want to be saved. Some were so traumatized they died because it was their wish. Ratchet had seen suicides of mechs he had helped bring back from the brink, only to lose them to their nightmares.

Looking at the transition mode the medic wondered what this one would be like. The first scans had indicated a lot of damage. A lot with a capital L. This was a mech who had nearly died on the battle field, had launched himself off into space and reabsorbed every piece of redundant armor so he was simply his basic form. He had wrapped everything he was around his spark, had maintained that support for the millennia he had drifted through space. He couldn’t have consciously steered the transition mode anywhere. He was too low on energon for that. His outer shell was so scratched and littered with space debris, not even the entry into Earth’s atmosphere had cleared him of it. The team had found a lot of remains in the crater they had dug to get the sphere out.

Ratchet set up his work space and began a detailed scan. It would take a while; hours actually. Penetrating the defensive shields might be easy because of the depleted state, but the core unit was harder to infiltrate. Whatever the mech had used for protection, if it was still active it would react to the probes, would drain his last reserves and effectively snuff out the spark.

The door opened and Optimus Prime stepped inside, grave optics falling onto the sphere.

“I know nothing yet,” Ratchet said without being prompted.

“I didn’t think you would,” was the mild reply.

Ratchet stopped for a moment, then faced his leader and nodded his apology. He was on the edge without knowing why. Maybe because this was the first time he encountered several difficulties at once: a transition mode he had to prompt back into the protoform shape; a mech of unknown affiliation; a spark wavering on the edge of permanent off-lining; damage to a normally so resilient protoform that even if he saved the spark, the body might still be a loss.

He calmed himself and continued to set up the machines. When he was done, Prime was still there.

“Do you need assistance?” the taller mech asked.

Translation: should they recall Sam?

“No.” Not yet. If things got difficult, if the technopath was needed, he would debate the good versus the bad. Sam was strong, but if this mech died on him while he was in such deep contact – and touching a mind this protected it had to be deep – might harm their human friend.

Optimus inclined his head, understanding the unspoken assessment.

Ratchet returned to his work and when he looked up a second time, hours had passed and Prime had long since left the lab.

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Lennox joined Ratchet for a few hours each day, watching him work, his runes no more or less active than any other day, the medic noted almost casually. His concentration was on his patient, but he kept an optic on the hybrid since he couldn’t scan him at all.

It was on day three that Ratchet finally managed to trigger the transition mode’s mechanism to unfold into the protoform it actually was. The noise that accompanied it was worse than nails on a board. It was painful and terrible and only confirmed what the medic had been fearing: the unknown mech’s state was dangerously close to a permanent shut-down.

Lennox stood close by, on a table, face impassive. He had never initiated a conversation in all the hours he had been here, had never asked. His eyes tracked the movement of the metal parts and Ratchet had to physically shift and push a few of them to align the body correctly. When he was done he found his initial guess that the mech had to be about nineteen feet confirmed. Even if he added a foot with armor, he wasn’t exceeding his own height.

Dead optics, dark and without color, gazed out of an expressionless face. Ratchet saw scars from where the mech had desperately reduced his armor, reabsorbing as much as he could in his terrible state, and been unable to pull it off as smoothly as a healthy Cybertronian could.

There were no sigils on the protoform, of course. No tattoos or carvings either. Those were left to the final form. It was like looking at a freshly born protoform that awaited a spark.  
But this one was old. And it had a spark. An injured, desperately weak spark that had sputtered too often for Ratchet’s liking already.

He looked at Will who had climbed up the table. Lennox looked back, raising an eyebrow.

“Still stable,” Ratchet said softly. “And still unknown.”

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He hadn’t called Sam, even if the technopath could have helped. But Sam needed time away from this, reboot, so to speak. He had to rest, recharge, whatever someone might call it, and wherever he and Bumblebee had gone to, Ratchet would not have them brought in on this.

Only as a last, desperate method.

Contacting the central core of a protoform was difficult and rightfully so. Should an unconscious mech fall into enemy hands, or the wrong hands, all kinds of data could be gleaned from it if not protected. So access was hard. In this damaged state even more so. Ratchet took miniscule steps, adjusting to changes immediately, pulling back or going forward – as was required. Whenever he stabilized a specific area he immediately secured it. It cost him time in his approach of the most important areas, but it also gave the protoform a chance to initiate a healing all by itself. Its energon levels were by now passable, though not satisfactory, and maybe a system or two would jump-start.

Keeping his own transmissions shielded, Ratchet worked slowly past a weak, fragmented shield, shaking his head at the dismal state. If this was a Decepticon, knowing an Autobot was working on him might trigger the wrong reaction. If it was an Autobot, maybe likewise, depending on his sanity. Ratchet had had patients attack him because they were locked in nightmares.

A soft crackle announced another shield giving way and he immediately set up the stabilizer for that area. He was closing in on the all-important last corner of the core unit.

This morning he had been joined by Jazz since Will had taken some time off on his own. Ratchet had no idea where he was, but Ironhide was still at the base, so the weapons specialist trusted his partner wherever he was.

And then there was a connection. Like a flame coming on unexpectedly the data flowed toward him and Ratchet caught the stream, reading the codes.

Known codes.

His optics flared.

Translation and encryption software sprang to life, easily making sense of the gibberish.

Ratchet stepped back from the protoform, optics bright with surprise. “Impossible!”

Jazz joined the larger mech. “What?”

“I reached his primary core unit.”

“And?” the first lieutenant probed.

“It’s an Autobot, Jazz. A specific Autobot, designation Prowl.”

Jazz’s optics flared. “Prowl? Prowl survived?!”

“Apparently.”

Ratchet pushed the smaller mech aside and quick hands set to work, connecting data cables and adjusting energon feeds. Jazz hovered close by, not interfering. He had immediately opened an internal comm line to Optimus and their leader’s exclamation of surprise echoed his own.

There was no great surprise in his arrival not much later, his massive frame radiating tension.

“Are you sure, Ratchet?” he demanded.

“Yes,” was the terse reply. “The ID codes are clear. It’s Prowl and before you ask, he’s highly unstable and I won’t bring him out of the deep stasis lock for any reason!”

Prime wasn’t rattled by the sharp tone of voice. “I wouldn’t ask you to, Ratchet.”

“Good.”

Ratchet ignored the two Autobots now watching his work as he continued to carefully insert probes and stabilize the spark. Now that they knew who it was, the difficult part began: making sure that the moment Ratchet chose to reboot Prowl’s consciousness his spark wouldn’t collapse under the pressure.

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The news spread through the base, as well as to the Autobots and their allies currently off-base. The Constructicons took hardly any notice. Well, all but Scrapper and Scavenger. Scrapper as the team leader had to know about developments concerning their allies, and Scavenger as the main liaison between the Constructicons and the Autobots. Hook couldn’t be bothered less, unless it concerned structural concerns, architectural problems or someone pulling the plug on his projects. Mixmaster had simply shrugged and gone back to experimenting with a new kind of alloy he and Long Haul were working on, and Long Haul himself had simply commented that if the new-comer was important for their work, they would be told.

Prowl wasn’t their concern. They had a different mission and it was called Ark.

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For Will Lennox, knowing the name meant nothing. From Ironhide’s reaction though, from all their reactions, it was someone important.

“Who is Prowl?” Lennox asked curiously.

“He was Prime’s military strategist,” Ironhide answered readily. “One of the innermost command circle. One of the officers closest to Prime, like Jazz or Ratchet. Quiet, competent, loyal, and famous for his almost endless patience. For all his military excellence he wasn’t one to get along with other mechs when not handling those matters. Not much of a social guy. He was such a stickler for rules and protocols, he could blow every party.”

Will grinned. “Yeah, know the kind.”

Ironhide shared the grin. “Prowl’s precision thinking and by-the-book planning served as a valuable counterpoint to Jazz's more improvisational style, and it was up to Optimus Prime to weigh their views and come to a decision. Usually he found the middle and it worked. Jazz and Prowl were a good team, like two sides of a medal, and where one complained the other was too freestyle, the other complained about the stiff pain in the diodes.” Ironhide turned more serious. “Prowl led the team Sideswipe was on. As well as Sunstreaker. Sideswipe said they got separated. We didn’t hope for Prowl’s survival until now.”

“So the others might be alive, too?”

Ironhide gave a rattling sigh. “Possible.”

“Sideswipe has that belief, I think.”

The mech nodded. “If Prowl made it to Earth, maybe Sunstreaker is out there somewhere, too. Maybe he knows.”

Will looked grim. “Let’s hope.”

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Not far away, in Malibu, Hot Rod was excited to hear about another of the core officers finding his way here, though Tony cautioned his enthusiasm.

“I know he isn’t out of the woods yet,” the R8 told his human friend and protégé.

“So keep a lid on it. You know how bad it’ll be if he doesn’t make it,” Stark only said, then turned back to what he was currently working on.

Hot Rod knew that. He understood it. Still, the prospect of Prowl being here, surviving, it was such great hope.

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A lot further East, Arcee smiled to herself, but she wasn’t as hopeful as the other mech. She had seen what had happened to Chromia, what war and torture and nightmares could do to a spark and its mind. She carefully locked away the hope and concentrated on the now.

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Bumblebee had received the encoded message and his reaction had been no different from Hot Rod or Arcee. He was happy. He was hoping. Sam, who had been doing nothing but sight-see, relax, and discover new ways of their bond in the hours they were just amongst themselves, frowned.

“Maybe I could help?”

“No. You heard Ratchet. He’ll ask for you if he thinks your help is required.”

“Stop treating me like some fragile child! I’m not!” the technopath growled.

Bumblebee, sitting on the deserted beach with his partner, watching the waves and enjoying the calmness, the wide stretches of unpopulated landscape, looked at the upset human.

“Sam, you know that’s not true. We care about you, but we wouldn’t hold you back. Nor would Ratchet be too proud to call if your abilities are Prowl’s only chance for survival.”

At the huff from his human partner, he ran gentle finger tips over the naked skin. It helped most of the times. Sam closed his eyes and leaned into the caress.

Humans were tactile. Sam responded to Bumblebee’s decidedly non-human touch as he would to another human’s. And he responded very well to experimental touches the mech had learned to apply.

“You want to head back,” Bumblebee stated after a moment of mutual silence.

Sam nodded. “Not right away. Not today or tomorrow. But soon.”

“I understand.”

“Thanks.”

The bond was alive with emotions and Bumblebee felt the warm presence that was Sam strengthen. They would make the most out of the time here. Reaffirm what they were, what they meant, what they could be. Being with Bumblebee balanced the human, armed him against the contact with other mech minds on a daily basis. This and Barricade’s training.

Sam smiled a little to himself. Two very different minds, two very different approaches to the technopath they guarded, and still both were needed.

Not that he would ever tell Barricade. He liked life way too much for that.

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One who responded with more than hope, with more than giddy excitement, with something akin to feverish belief, was Sideswipe. He had immediately turned around and driven back to base. He knew he had broken several speeding limits, but no one had caught him. No one ever would. He arrived at the Nevada base three hours after receiving the message, but he wasn’t allowed to see Prowl.

“Ratchet’s orders,” Ironhide told him firmly. “Prowl’s nowhere near stable or active. You wait, like all of us.”

Sideswipe’s spark pulsed with need, with an ache that now and then overwhelmed him with grief and loneliness.

Prowl had been his team leader, his commander. His and Sunstreaker’s. Prowl might know about his twin.

“Sideswipe, leave,” the weapons specialist ordered.

And he did. Mind racing, he walked out of the base and sought a quiet area. He stayed there, watching the comings and goings.

Prowl was on Earth. He had survived.

Hope burns eternal, he thought. His hope for Sunstreaker’s continued presence, for reuniting with his twin.

Prowl was the key.

Prowl was the only one who could give him certainty.

Too bright optics fixed on the base entrance again, but instead of going back inside, Sideswipe transformed and drove off.

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Ironhide frowned as he watched the silver car speed away. He hadn’t agreed with Optimus that they should tell everyone. Just the inner command staff and the human commanders. But especially not Sideswipe. He had a bad feeling about this.

Sideswipe had a reckless edge in battle. His tactics spoke of that. He would make rash decisions that might endanger him, all in the name of possible victory. When everything was on the line, for Sideswipe nothing was out of the question or impossible. It was that trait that had the chief of security on edge. Very much on edge.

Ironhide couldn’t even begin to fathom what it was like to have a twin spark. He could understand a bond, but twins were different. Twins were born at the same time, shared a connection that was forever, couldn’t be severed, couldn’t be replaced. Twins were one spark in two bodies. Bonds formed if a mech was lucky; twin connections were there right away. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe had never known different.

What Sideswipe felt, the loss and uncertainty, was something Ironhide could understand to a degree. A small degree. He had lost comrades and friends, but never half of his spark.

Rumbling uneasily to himself he went back inside and immediately checked security. When he found everything to his liking he returned to his work, but Sideswipe was still on his mind.

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Ratchet had spent the whole night working on the filigree neural network surrounding the core unit. It was like trying to weld almost invisible wires together, ones that were actually tubes that contained precious liquid, without injuring the surface, overheat them, or break them because he cooled the repaired area down too quickly. He had to use microscopic tools. A human might have been able to help, but he didn’t want to risk any of them getting injured should the protoform mech startle out of his stasis by chance.

“Need help?”

Ratchet looked down and met the serious, intense gaze of Will Lennox.

“I know you kicked everyone else out, but I’m not exactly easy to injure, Ratchet. And I know my way around a few tools. I could help.”

Ratchet debated the pro and cons for a second, then lifted his new assistant onto the table. Will’s eyes ran over the prone form. Ratchet had already been able to open several areas of the ultra-dense material and was working on the damage he found there.

“What do you need me to do?”

So the medic explained. Lennox listened, then picked up human-sized tools and started on cleaning up the areas pointed out to him.

Hours passed.

People came and went.

Someone brought food for Will, who ate almost absent-mindedly as he watched Ratchet close another panel. The runes were docile, barely reacting to touching the alien metal, which was strange. Usually they would reflect the name of the one he touched. It had happened when Ratchet had picked him up. The Cybertronian glyphs, his Cybertronian name, had briefly been written over the back of Will’s left hand. This one… nothing.

“He’s alive,” Ratchet told him as Lennox remarked on it. “But he’s terribly weak and I won’t risk a reboot, let alone a contact through direct spark connection, unless his body is stable enough to last through the feedback this would create.”

Will understood and after emptying the second mug of coffee he continued. Repairing the connective tissue, as well as the fluid-metal interface took long. Some areas looked like the tissue had died, but Ratchet reassured him that once the energon levels were satisfactory, the spark would handle those matters.

“Let’s hope,” the ex-Army major muttered, shooting the blackened area a doubtful look.

Flicking on the torch welder he got back to work.

 

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Two days of non-stop work resulted in a more or less viable protoform where the connective tissue was just now turning a healthier color and the fluid-metal interfaces were filling with the fluids they should contain. Still, pulses from the spark were below what Ratchet had hoped for.

Will had worked through the two days without rest, absorbed in his task and learning a lot more about protoforms than he had been able to gather from files. His own body might look like one of these basic forms, but it was different and he had never been more aware of it than now.  
Tired, muscles aching, but satisfied with the result of his own work the hybrid went back to his own quarters, thoughts of a shower and sleep most prominent on his mind.

He wasn’t surprised to find Ironhide joining him halfway there. He didn’t protest the fact that the hologram came out when Lennox returned from his shower, pulling him into a comforting hug as he crawled into bed. Ironhide liked this way of spending time with his partner and who was Will to protest?

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Sideswipe looked at the protoform stretched out on the treatment table, hooked up to who knew what. He only recognized the energon feed that slowly and under intense observation from two independent monitoring machines dripped the life-sustaining substance into the damaged body. In this basic form there was hardly an identifying mark on the mech, but something told Sideswipe that it was Prowl. Not just the knowledge gleaned from Ratchet’s careful probe, but also a recognition of his former team leader.

Maybe it was simple hope and desperation, too.

Because Prowl knew where Sunstreaker was. Whether he was dead or alive, captured or destroyed. And Sideswipe had to know.

He had stayed away from the base for the past two days, had tried to stop thinking about Sunstreaker, about Prowl, about the knowledge his former team leader had concerning his twin.

It hadn’t worked.

His spark sometimes experienced phantom echoes of his brother. It was as if he was close, just around the next corner, and Sideswipe flashed to happier times. Pulling pranks when they were younger, aging their instructors by millennia within one Academy year. He smiled. Yeah, they had been bad. They had been trouble.

Not that their relationship had been as harmonious as their twinned sparks might suggest. Sunstreaker was vain. Arrogant even. He didn’t respect others who couldn’t keep up with him. When teamed up, he would complain about the others’ shortcomings until things got out of hand.  
But he was a ruthless, skilled fighter, and he had had his kills throughout the war. Both of them had and they had looked out for each other. It was an unspoken rule that the twins would never be on separate teams.

Sideswipe missed him.

His spark constricted painfully and he suppressed the hitch rising in his systems. He didn’t care if they might not see each other for the next century, but the knowledge… he had to know! If he knew, things would be better. He believed in it.

Walking over to the table he followed the different wires until he identified the connection to the core unit. Ratchet was keeping matters slow; too slow. Sideswipe had to know! He was no medic, but he understood basic first aid, and bringing a shell-shocked spark back, force it to reboot, had been part of that training.

Familiarizing himself with the program he entered a command and a read-out appeared. He studied it, then increased the energon feed and simultaneously entered the command for the core to reboot.

Something slammed into him and he cried out in pain and surprise. He was caught by strong hands and something more massive than him smacked him hard against the wall. Hard enough to rattle his systems. A hand clamped around his neck and banged his head against the unyielding surface.

“What the slag are you doing?!”

Ratchet.

Sideswipe gave a little wheeze. “I need to know!” he finally managed.

“Need to know what?” the medic demanded sharply, in his face, optics ablaze with fury.

“Sunstreaker. Prowl knows. He has to!”

“Prowl is currently more dead than alive and what you almost did would have killed him before he even got a word out!”

“No… I need to… know!”

Ratchet shook his head, disgust in his optics. “The state your former commander is in, he might just have lost all what made him Prowl, do you understand? I don’t know if he even knows who he is!”

Ratchet released him and Sideswipe slid to the floor, touching his bruised neck. Images of his twin raced through his mind and he had this need, this incredible need to finally know. It was hard enough to be alone when there had always been someone with him, someone who was as much like him as he wasn’t. Sunstreaker had been… was!... his twin. He needed to know. His spark ached with the uncertainty.

Ratchet ignored him as he checked the monitor and entered several commands.

“Ratchet?”

Sideswipe was surprised he hadn’t noticed Ironhide, who had apparently been there all the time. The massive guns were aimed at him and the glow in their depths told of how close the silver mech had come to being obliterated.

“Get him out of here, Ironhide!” Ratchet only snapped.

“Sure thing.”

Sideswipe was unceremoniously grabbed and hauled to his feet, then pushed and dragged roughly out of the med bay unit.

“Please,” he whispered. “I need to know.”

“What you need to know is that you nearly killed your commander because you’re an idiot!” Ironhide snarled. “If it was up to me, you’d be off-lined immediately. But Prime wants to see you first.”

Sideswipe felt his systems shiver.

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By the time he arrived in the Prime’s office Sideswipe’s mind had cleared enough that he realized in horror what he had almost done. Guilt flooded him; guilt, shame, embarrassment, and fear. The last months had worked out so well. He had spent time travelling with Maxx Racing, getting to know humans in a completely different way. These were men and women not associated with the Autobot base or the military. It was a new experience. He had developed a friendly relationship with many, including his ‘driver’, Sergeant Reese, and his return had somehow felt like he was leaving behind people he would have wanted to spend more time with.

Now that Maxx Racing was back in the US to test for the up-coming season of Formula One racing such close observation wasn’t needed. Reese was still there, their permanent liaison, but Arcee had joined the team for a while.

With Ironhide close behind him, Sideswipe entered the office space, squaring his shoulders to face his punishment. Prime’s face was a mask, only his ancient optics speaking of the emotions inside. The intensity of that gaze robbed Sideswipe of all he wanted to tell the Autobot leader. It had him lower his gaze, admit defeat.

“Why?” Optimus only asked without preamble.

“Prowl was with Sunstreaker. He might know where he is,” Sideswipe heard himself say.

“You don’t know if he was there. You don’t know what he saw, where his last battle was fought.”

“But if he was with my brother…”

“Then he will tell us when he is stable enough. Prowl is in such a fragile state, anything, the slightest tremor, could take his spark,” Optimus said, voice level. “Ratchet told everyone, including you. I knew it was a risk to give you this information, but I was ready to take it – against advice.”

Ironhide rumbled behind him. Sideswipe wanted to sink into the ground. He had acted as the weapons specialist had predicted. As probably everyone had said. Optimus had believed in him; the Prime had trusted him!

“I’m sorry, Prime,” he whispered.

“Sorry doesn’t cut it,” Ironhide growled. “If Prowl dies because of your tampering…”

“I didn’t get to initiate the reboot!” the silver mech cried.

“Thanks to Ratchet!” the more massive Autobot snapped.

Sideswipe evaded the knowing optics once more.

“You leave me no choice, Sideswipe,” Optimus said.

“Sir…?”

“Ironhide wants you deactivated for at least six months.”

“Prime…” he begged, aghast at the punishment. Six months!

“I still believe that there is some part of you that understands what you did, that regrets it,” Prime went on, fixing him with a hard look. “A part that has control enough to follow my next order.”

He froze.

“Leave the base. Leave the state, Sideswipe. I don’t want you within a radius of a thousand miles of the Nevada base at all until we recall you.”

Sideswipe felt his spark lurch. “Sir?”

“You heard me. If you choose to, rejoin Maxx Racing. Arcee will change places with you. Stay with them until you have my explicit approval to come here once more.”

Sideswipe trembled. “Yes, Prime.”

Optimus nodded, still unreadable. Sideswipe had never been in such a powerful presence. He had never seen Prime as he was now. This was their leader and he could feel it in every circuit.

Leaving the office he was aware of Ironhide following him, but he ignored the heavily armed mech. It felt as if everyone was looking at him, knew what he had done, what he had almost done, and Sideswipe had never been more glad to transform and just drive.

So he drove.

His spark ached and whimpered as he put miles upon miles between him and the only other mech who might know about Sunstreaker.

The mech he had almost killed.

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Security around med bay had been increased and only a handful of mechs and humans were allowed to enter. Ratchet had spent an hour checking and rechecking Prowl’s read-outs. Nothing had happened. He was still stable and so he increased the energon flow of the feed.

 

A week after the incident he finally allowed the innermost systems to reattach to the spark, to be flooded by energon.

 

Two days after that the peripheral systems were coming slowly online, at barely two percent of the original computing speed.

 

At the end of that week the core program was running at sixty-five percent and stabilizing. Ratchet started to send careful signals into the spark, reassuring it that Prowl was among friends. Sam had come back, but Ratchet didn’t need him yet. He had politely turned down all offers of help.

 

A month after Sideswipe had left the base Prowl’s spark was at ninety percent, his systems were rebooting one after another, and by the end of the day his optics started to come online. Fingers twitched and curled slightly, then the voice modulator gurgled softly.

Ratchet leaned over the brightening optics, smiling a little as he sent his personal ID over and over.

“Hello, Prowl. Welcome back.”

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Med bay had been declared a high security zone. Only Optimus Prime, Jazz and Ironhide had been granted access by Ratchet and the medic was very strict not to stress the newly awakened Prowl in any way. The mech was confused, which had only been expected. His processor was still not working at full capacity and he had to shut down and recharge after short intervals of on-line time.

Optimus regarded his former officer with both relief and worry. Ratchet had been very clear that despite the fact that the spark was growing stronger and the protoform wasn’t in imminent danger of a crash, Prowl was far from out of the woods just yet. He was weak, he needed extensive repair and energon feeds, and even then it wasn’t known how much of him had truly survived. The few moments of lucidity had been hardly enough.

Direct uplinks were forbidden. Not even Ratchet, who was a medic and best-suited for this kind of data transfer, risked it.

“If we jostle his systems too much everything was for nothing,” he told the three most senior mechs.

Prime nodded his understanding.

“I don’t want him in contact with anyone outside the three of us. No humans will have access to this area for now. We don’t know how traumatized his mind is, what his reactions to alien contact might be.”

“I’ve already talked with Captain Epps and he has pulled back everyone from the vicinity of med bay,” Optimus Prime said calmly. “Communication will be by remote voice, not by image.”

“I incapacitated the protoform’s transscan and automatic environmental analysis unit. Prowl will stay as he is for now, he has no access to our equipment and everything is locked down and encoded.”

Jazz walked over to the silent form, looking pained. He didn’t say a word, but his expression was clear and Ratchet tried to ignore the stab it gave him. The situation, while similar, wasn’t the same. Jazz had been dead; revived by the shard. Prowl had been in deep stasis and there was no shard any more. Not that it would have helped anyway.

“I’ll keep you updated,” he said, breaking the silence.

It was also the order to leave.

Jazz lingered a little longer. Ratchet tried to ignore the smaller mech and managed to do so passably, but when the first lieutenant had finally left, he gave a humming sigh. Even if it had been over a decade of this planet’s time, Jazz was still suffering from the loss, from what his brief death had taken from him. No one and nothing could bring it back and no one and nothing could ease the pain that the dark holes had left.

Ratchet, though he would never tell anyone, was secretly glad that Jazz’s spark-bonded was with him. Barricade, for all his harshness and dark exterior, was what Jazz needed, who he turned to.

Hopefully he would do so now, too.

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Jazz hadn’t sought out his bonded; Barricade had taken matters into his own hands. While he kept away from the Autobot base as much as he could get away with – and with the new Autobot found hovering near death he had even better reason not to stay too long – he was never far. Feeling the upset from his partner, the spark he knew as well as his own quivering at odd intervals, he had gone hunting for the wayward lieutenant. Jazz had left the base and travelled for hours, coming to rest near the Nevada-Utah state line. There was nothing here, nothing at all, and the highways were far off in the distance.

Barricade navigated the rocky ground, muttering about stupid Autobots, but his scanners were fully on the motionless mech he was approaching. He transformed when he was close enough.

Jazz didn’t really react.

The former Decepticon didn’t have to cast out his signal; Jazz knew who had come. Their sparks were almost pinging off each other.

Where years ago Barricade might have shocked his partner out of his dark thoughts with a mock-attack, taunts and maybe a few choice words, he now studied the lone silver form. Too much had changed between them to go back to the seemingly unemotional approach of comforting the other spark. Too much had evolved. He hated the closeness, but he wanted it. He hated the emotions Jazz had freed, but he needed them. He hated being this vulnerable, but Jazz was everything. Jazz was part of him. He was part of Jazz. Autobot, Decepticon, it meant nothing.

Instead of a battle approach he came to a stop behind the seated mech and placed dangerously clawed hands onto the shoulder armor.

Jazz’s response was a shiver, giving Barricade a good impression of the sensitivity level of his partner’s microfine sensor net.

“Foolish Autobot,” Barricade whispered.

Jazz leaned back, shivering more. “I know. I know. Sorry.”

“Now you’re being pathetic.”

The other smirked briefly. “Not working?”

“No.”

“Damn.” Still, the fire was missing. “Am I not entitled to some morose, dark brooding?”

Barricade chuckled darkly. “Do you want an answer?”

Jazz shook his head and leaned more fully into the contact. His head rested against Barricade’s chest plate, the optics on the nothingness around them.

“I hope Prowl survives intact. I really do.”

Echoes from the scarred wounds inside Jazz, the deep holes in his memory, touched Barricade’s receptive mind. Usually Jazz only stumbled upon them when he tried to recall an event that was gone, beyond recovery, only a shadow left behind. A memory shadow.

“The war left none of us intact,” the shock-trooper said darkly.

Barricade felt Jazz’s spark waver. Aside from him, no one would ever see his partner this vulnerable, this open, this… intimately. They had always trusted each other with their very sparks, from the beginning, and Barricade knew what a treasure he had been given. Prime might know what Jazz was going through, had gone through, but not on the same level. Ratchet, as a medic, knew the bare facts. Sam… yes, he might come close. His connection to Jazz was through technopathy, not a bond.

He slid one hand to rest docile claws over the well-armored spark chamber. Every pulse from underneath the armor was felt within his own spark.

“This is us,” he rumbled. “Only this. Forget everything else.”

Jazz nodded. “Sometimes things get kicked lose. Dark things. And then I feel the holes more than before. I want to remember and there’s nothing at all. Just… blanks.”

Barricade pushed forward, forcing the other spark to acknowledge him. Jazz gave a little whine of need and the shock-trooper enveloped him in a fierce embrace. They slipped into Sharing, quick and hard and needed. Jazz’s optics flared with that need, with the overpowering pain of loss, and Barricade simply held on to him, not letting go.

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Night found the two mechs still in the same place, their armors cooling off, their sparks still entwined. Barricade had half a scanner on their surroundings, but aside from the occasional desert mammal, reptile or insect, nothing disturbed them.

Energy coursed through him, tearing him apart. He was flung through an endless tunnel, leaving a part of him behind; leaving his body, his only connection with life. He screamed, trying to fight, but he couldn't. He was thrown into a pool of blackness, blue lightning exploding around him.

Barricade stored that flashback away, locked it, held on to his bonded with a fierce protectiveness. Jazz wasn’t weak, but right now he needed, and Barricade gave.

Soon the Autobot would return to the base, back to his old self, everything locked behind his usual façade. As always. Jazz’s armor hummed, creating teasing friction between them, and while Barricade wasn’t as sensitive, he understood playful.

A first step.

He grinned darkly at the blue optics regarding him. Jazz only smiled back.

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Prowl didn’t know what to think of his surroundings. Prison cell or quarantine, where was the difference? Ratchet was his main contact and so far he had only been allowed to talk to Optimus Prime in person. Of course, missing a good chunk of memory made him dangerous. He realized that much. What if he was a Decepticon plant? What if his millennia in the ice served only that plan?

Then again, how could any Decepticon foresee these events?

His circuits ached with the clashing conclusions, with theories that didn’t fit, with the phantom pain of injuries sustained long ago. Ratchet didn’t allow him to transscan and he was on a constant energon feed. No one had told him much about the surroundings, aside from the fact that he wasn’t on Cybertron.

Cybertron was dead.

He shivered. Memories teased with darkness lit up by fire, ash falling out of the burning sky, covering him in debris. Lightning raced across the darkness that had once been a thriving planet..

Prowl didn’t know how he had escaped. He couldn’t remember the battle that had nearly killed him. He couldn’t recall the conscious effort to turn into his most basic form and launch himself off his dying home. The fragments teased him, but Ratchet had told him that too much of his memory core had suffered permanent damage. The medic didn’t touch those circuits, afraid to wipe out the rest. He was relying on Prowl’s systems to heal themselves.

The former military strategist had never felt so lost and alone, unable to remember, unable to make the connections.

The door to his room opened and his optics fell on the silver mech accompanying Ratchet.

“Jazz!” he exclaimed, the name supplied to him by his flaky circuits.

Information flooded his mind and he was relieved to have that knowledge. Seeing faces, hearing names, kicked lose small avalanches. He absorbed them with vigor and need.

“Knew you’d remember me,” the Autobot second-in-command quipped. “Squabbled enough to leave a permanent memory, huh?”

Prowl remembered. Yes, he remembered Jazz, their fights over mission plans and strategies, and those memories had him smile. He remembered names and places, battles, wins and losses. He remembered the time before the war, his life, almost everything. It was slow and sometimes painful.

“I suppose. You are hard to forget, Jazz.”

The grin was insolent. “Yeah, I’ve been told.”

Something else wanted to rise, but it wasn’t strong enough yet. A memory that was important, that was connected to Jazz.

“Ratchet decided I might be the best choice to bring you up to speed on some matters, introduce you to what happened, where we are now, what’s going on…” Jazz went on. “He’s against downloading the files into your core because of the damage and the chance of instability.”

Prowl nodded. That sounded logical.

“You have no idea when you left Cybertron?” the specialist asked.

“No,” he answered truthfully.

“Tyger Pax mean anything? Megatron going for the Allspark? Prime ejecting it into space? Your team going up against Soundwave?”

“Tyger Pax…” He knew the name. He remembered battles. He remembered faces. “Parts,” he finally said.

It had been the all-decisive battle. It had been set up by Prime to remove the Allspark from Megatron’s grasp. Still, there were holes.

“Okay. I might repeat a lot that you already know, but that might give it all a better structure. So…”

And Jazz began. From the beginning of the end.

 

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Sam hadn’t been allowed to see the reawakened protoform, but he had accustomed himself to the pulses of the new mind. He felt Prowl’s confusion most prominently, even without direct contact. It was such a strong signal, the technopath couldn’t help but overhear it.

“Don’t touch him,” Ratchet had advised. “I know you know your way around a Cybertronian mind and spark, but Prowl is still not stable enough to be confronted by a technopath.”

Sam had understood and agreed. Ratchet hadn’t been happy to see him, would have preferred him to stay away, but there was nothing he could do – aside from physically trying to remove their resident technopath.

So he simply sat in a quiet corner of the base, eyes closed, concentrating on the new mind alone, observing.

Firmly anchored in Bumblebee he watched the military strategist in a way no one else could. He honored his vow not to touch. He had become expert enough to just look without the observed mech noticing his presence. It limited his diagnostic abilities, but it helped in simply getting to know someone.

“Tell me about Prowl,” he asked of his bonded partner when they were within the privacy of Sam’s home.

And Bumblebee did, filling more and more blanks.

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Halfway across the continent, Sideswipe crawled into a garage and shut down his lights. Everything fell into darkness until steps announced the arrival of the owner of the garage. Or at least someone who lived here.

Lights were switched on.

Sergeant Tom Reese looked at the silver sports car. “Hey, Sides.”

“Hello, Tom,” was the polite reply.

“Got the call in case you showed up.”

He was silent.

“Wanna talk?”

“No.”

“Just as well.”

The soldier opened the fridge that was part and parcel of the garage. The garage belonged to Maxx Racing, was spacious and normally housed at least two race cars, as well as several test versions, engines and whatnot. Right now it was silent, the darkness spreading beyond the circle of light undisturbed.

Reese switched on a small TV, singled out a station and kicked up his legs as he sipped at his soda. Sideswipe found his presence a welcome addition to his loneliness, and he lost himself in the rather inane program.

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Prowl had a lot to digest. Jazz hadn’t told him everything yet, just the basics. He knew he was on Earth, that the planet was populated with an organic species. Only a few of them knew about the Cybertronians. They were hiding. He knew of the base, of Project, of the former Sector Seven. He knew of the destruction of the Allspark and the one remaining shard, though Jazz had smoothly changed subject after mentioning it. Prowl realized there was more. He knew of the mechs on Earth, of the new-arrivals, even though there had been another void. Nothing Jazz had clearly said, only the feeling of something being left out.

But it was currently enough to digest. His mind was reeling with all that knowledge and Prime had been right to restrict his access to the base. He had been ‘upgraded’ from his one room quarantine to a specific area of the base, most of which included the medical area. Prowl had yet to run into any humans. The first contact would probably be closely monitored, though he had never had any kind of xenophobic moments in the past. And he had met other life forms.

Jazz came back for a second round of information, one that revealed Sideswipe’s presence among the small team of Autobots.

“Can I talk to him?” Prowl asked hopefully.

“Nope. Prime told him to stay away until he calls him back.”

“Why?” the strategist wanted to know, perplexed.

“He almost killed you.”

Blue optics flared. “What?”

Jazz sighed. “Long story. Short version is: Sides thinks you know where Sunstreaker might have ended up. Whether he’s dead or alive, trapped, hiding or captured by the enemy. He tried to revive your core unit to get to the information. Ratchet nearly blew a hole in his chest when he walked in on it. You were way too unstable to go through a reboot that massive. Prime told him to either stay away unless called back or face deactivation for at least six months. Sideswipe chose the exile.”

Prowl was stunned, trying not to show it. His mind raced, trying to find any information on Sunstreaker, but all he remembered was the mech’s face, his alt mode, his antics with Sideswipe, and fighting side by side. Prowl had no idea at all if he had been with the twin when his own shell had been so badly damaged or not.

“Prowler?”

Jazz’s soft intonation had him look up. Again something jittered through his memory. Jazz… It had to do with Jazz and something he had discovered. It still evaded him,

“I don’t know,” he finally said, voice level.

The silver mech nodded as if he had expected just that.

As much as it hurts, Prowl added to himself.

“Now, to add some more to what you already know -- and bear with me, from here on it gets kinda… intense – there are some specific people you need to know about.”

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Jazz needed a moment to calm his jittery nerves and fight back the looming terror when he finally left Prowl to digest what he had told him. Throughout the narration he hadn’t given the fact of lost memories much thought. Now was all the more time to think about it.

Prowl had memory holes. Everything just after leaving for Tyger Pax, with the exception of a few snippets, was gone. Erased.

Like his own memory, though he was actually worse off.

Steeling himself, he walked down the corridor. Barricade wasn’t here and while he wanted to be with his bonded, he had duties to fulfill. The moment in the desert would have to be enough and Jazz chided himself for being so unstable in that matter.

He had accepted his losses.

He had counted his gains.

He was alive and he was with his spark-bonded. Nothing else should matter. Nothing at all.

Prowl’s fate had been a different one. Theirs was a different problem.

Releasing air from vents he gave a hiss of annoyance, then shoved all the pain and darkness away. He was Jazz, the Prime’s second in command, not some scrap-bot or drone. He would handle this, just as he always did.

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“He’s taking it well,” Ironhide rumbled two days later.

Jazz shrugged. “It’s Prowl. No one knows what really goes on inside that crazy head of his. But yeah, he’s taking it well. It’s a slow process and he probably doesn’t understand most of it yet, has to meet Will and Sam in person, but we’re getting there.”

“Your help is invaluable,” Prime agreed.

Optimus himself had spent time talking to his former military strategist and friend. Prowl had many questions, some only coming up much later, and Prime tried to answer them as best as he could.

Prowl still didn’t remember anything after a certain point. He recalled his team, he recalled the order to stop a Decepticon attack, secure the area, and then… nothing.

“We can’t restore his last memories,” Ratchet had told his leader. “It’s impossible. Everything was destroyed. He lost that.”

“Are you certain?”

“As certain as I can be.”

Prime made a soft noise that expressed his sorrow at the news.

“But he’s still Prowl,” Jazz insisted. “He’s still who he was, with a few holes. He’s alive and he’s here!”

“Yes, that he is, Jazz,” Optimus agreed. “That he is.”

He looked into the intense optics of his normally so laid-back and cool second. Jazz felt with their old friend and Prime knew why. If there was one among them who could fathom what it meant to have such blank spots, whole events gone, it was Jazz.

They had to take it slow. Ratchet would ensure that nothing overwhelmed the battered Autobot and everything else had to be seen.

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Prowl stood at the door leading to the main hangar of the Autobot base, watching the movement of humans and mechs, hiding in the shadows to be a silent observer. He was still unable to understand a lot of what had changed, but he accepted it. Maybe because his logic circuits were still in so much need of healing. Maybe because his memories were a leaky sieve. Maybe because the damage done to him had turned the old Prowl into someone else. He still remembered parts of his past, of what it was like to be him. He still felt the same. Just his reactions were… slower.

Jazz joined him, smiling a little at the protoform Autobot. “Lost any synapses yet?” he teased.

“Plenty,” was the wry reply.

“Figures. I always knew one could blow your oh-so logical mind with a bit of fancy stuff that doesn’t follow protocol.”

Prowl glowered at the smaller mech. “You were the fancy stuff that got on my nerves and blew my synapses apart.”

Jazz’s grin was unrepentant, probably because he had been gunning for that response. Prowl returned to watching the humans. He had asked Optimus for access to a computer to learn about this world and Ratchet had supervised his first introduction to the humans’ internet, keeping watchful optics on him. Prowl didn’t dare to directly download files, but he had developed a quick learning method.

“You trust them?” he finally asked.

“Yes,” Jazz immediately answered. “They’re our allies.”

“Like the Constructicons?”

Prowl felt pronouncedly unwell with former Decepticons, even pawns, working for them. But he had his reactions under control. Things had changed; the situation was a different one. This was an alliance to survive and to protect.

“Yep.”

Another frown. Who was he to judge operations that had been going on for more than ten planetary years? Still, his processor was logical enough in that regard: Decepticons were not to be trusted!

Another memory teased. The old one of before. The one connected to Jazz. He looked at the first lieutenant, unable to catch the fleeting thought.

“Prowl? You okay, man?”

“Yes, I’m perfectly fine.”

He turned and walked away, disturbed by what he couldn’t understand, by what nagged on him and wasn’t ready to be revealed. Maybe it was another faulty circuit, one that would forever taunt him with fragments that made no sense. He had to talk to Ratchet about it.

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The medic was hiding something, of that Prowl was now sure. He had told the other mech of his trouble remembering something vitally important – to himself, maybe even for the Autobots – when it came to his old friend and verbal sparring partner.

“You know what it is,” Prowl now simply said.

Ratchet shifted, releasing a whirr of air in a sigh. “Yes.”

“And you won’t tell me.” Another statement.

“I think Jazz should be the one to give you that particular information.”

Prowl frowned. It sounded logical, but if the specialist hadn’t told him before, why should he tell him now? Prowl knew about the two hybrid humans, one more changed from his original human programming than the other. He knew about the Constructicons, about Tony Stark, about the Ghosts and the Ark. What else was there to know?

“I want to talk to Jazz first,” Ratchet interrupted his thoughts.

Prowl nodded. He had to accept this, even if it made the elusive memory even more strange and seemingly dangerous.

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Jazz had just finished going over the incoming messages – a folder chock-full of boring bureaucratic stuff – when Ratchet contacted him through the internal comm lines. The Solstice stiffened as he heard about Prowl’s suspicion, then hung his head a little.

“I’ll talk to him,” he finally told the other Autobot.

“You know what this means, Jazz.”

“Yeah.” Prowl must have suspected something back throughout the war. He must have known. Maybe he had seen….

Jazz shut off the computer. If Prowl had suspected something why had he never reported to Prime or taken matters into his own hands? If he had believed that Jazz was collaborating with a Decepticon… or had he known it was a spark-bond? Jazz felt his spark stutter at that. No one had. He had told Prime; their leader hadn’t discovered the truth either. He had told him because he trusted him. Prowl could have off-lined Jazz easily with a well-placed shot and argued he had terminated a traitor; an enemy agent.

He hadn’t.

Leaving his work area Jazz wished for the first time since Prowl’s reactivation that Barricade was at the base, but his bonded had wisely decided to not provoke the confused protoform too much. There was time for that later, he had told Jazz.

Jazz smiled a little. Yeah, he could see those two getting along just fine… not!

His feet took him to the medical area where Ratchet insisted Prowl spend his recharge time. Prowl was there; he knew from Ratchet.

“Hey, brainiac,” he called a greeting at the protoform Autobot.

Ratchet looked up from a screen when Jazz entered, nodded once, then walked out. Prowl’s optics fell on him, curious, but also guarded, and he stiffened a little.

“Jazz.”

“Ratchet told me you’re remembering something. At least you want to and it’s not working. Connected to me.”

Prowl tensed, but he nodded.

“What do you recall?” Jazz probed.

“Something important. It’s very important and connected to you.”

“Something you wanted to tell Prime?”

Prowl seemed to be thinking, then shook his head. “No.”

Jazz was silent for a moment, then pushed himself onto a second examination table, legs dangling, facing the strategist.

“You have to know that Prime knew. All the time. What I tell you, everyone here knows. It’s an open secret. I just don’t want you to start blasting at one ally who means more to me than all of you together.”

Prowl’s optics flared and he sat up straight. “Decepticon…” he stuttered as if a memory had just dropped like a bomb in his mind.

Jazz nodded sadly. “My spark-bonded.”

Now the stunned expression was truly no longer hidden. Prowl made a noise like a wheeze and his fingers clenched.

“Bonded?”

“Yes.”

“When?!” he demanded.

“Before the war broke out. I can’t tell you what it felt like, what it was, but I couldn’t leave him alone. I had to meet him. All I ever had was see him. I knew who he was, knew he was dangerous, the elite, a shock-trooper.”

Prowl elicited another wheeze.

“We didn’t know why it was us. We didn’t know what made it happen. It was… special, Prowl.” Jazz felt a smile tug at his lips. “Very special. I felt his spark… perfectly.”

“Bonded,” the other mech stammered.

“Yes. Spark-bonded. My perfect resonance. Total compatibility. There was no denying it.”

“But he’s a Decepticon!”

“It never mattered, Prowl. Never.”

 

The first time they Shared deeply was in a private place chosen by Barricade. Knowing they shared one spark had been one thing, but this impulse to open up, to let another into that most private of places, was overwhelming. It was like a revelation. Jazz had never felt this free, so much like flying, as if nothing he had ever worried about really existed. Compared to the beauty of this connection, everything else faded away. There were no lies within the bond, no subterfuge, no hiding and no deception. He looked at the real Barricade, at the spark that was so much like his own it was unbelievable.

There were no walls at all. This was one’s pure self. All the darkness and all the light. Beautiful, enticing, perfect to Jazz’s optics. And when he touched the incredible spark, it resonated deeply.

There was an absolute trust between them. Nothing could upset that. Not Jazz’s happy-go-lucky outward appearance, not Barricade’s gruff, unapproachable and dangerous air.

They knew each other.

He would never let this feeling go.

 

“Prime knew?”

“I told him. Barricade would never betray me, sell me out, and Prime knew it. I can’t sacrifice his life just like he can’t sacrifice mine. When Megatron tore me apart…” The silver mech stopped for a second, then ploughed on, “when he killed me, Barricade turned his back on the Decepticons. His loyalty was to Megatron, but what Megatron had done annihilated everything.”

“I remember Barricade,” Prowl murmured.

“Bet you do.”

“He killed our kind.”

“Like we killed his. Our brothers.”

Prowl shook himself. It had been a civil war, senseless and brutal and ending in the destruction of everything he had held dear. Those who had followed Megatron were all guilty in his eyes. He could never forgive a single one for his deeds, Autobot murderer or not. The shock-troopers had been Megatron’s assassins. They had done what their master had ordered. They had followed voluntarily.

One of them was Jazz’s bonded.

Dear Cybertron….

“He’s an ally?” he finally asked.

“Yes. Trusted. He trained Sam; he nearly got killed on occasions, even through Sam. I trust him with my spark, Prowl.”

“Of course you do,” he snapped.

Blue optics flared and Jazz tensed.

“How did you find out, Prowl?” the first lieutenant asked neutrally.

Prowl smirked. “You’re good, but not that good.”

And you’re an asshole sometimes, but not much of one, Jazz thought wryly. Getting your brain pureed didn’t change that.

“I noticed some things. You kept disappearing at odd intervals and I followed you once. It was after the war had started, when sides were still not clear.”

Something inside Jazz grew cold.

“I didn’t see anyone, but I know you had met the enemy.”

“You didn’t tell Prime.”

“No. I wanted to have facts to back up the accusation.”

“Which you found,” he stated. “And still you didn’t tell.”

Prowl shook his head, optics softening. “No. Because you were loyal. You were Prime’s second. You were trusted. I know he did and I realized he knew something, too. Whatever it was, I thought it was a mission.”

“In a way.”

Prowl leaned forward. “Spark-bonds are very special, Jazz. We all know it. I just didn’t know it was that; I could never fathom it being a Con.”

“It doesn’t matter when it happens.” Jazz smirked a little. “For all you know, your bonded could be Megatron and it wouldn’t change a thing.”

Prowl grimaced.

“So he’s here?”

“Around,” Jazz only said.

Prowl tried to calm down. “Not at the base?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because of you.”

Jazz felt a little bit of satisfaction at the confusion written over the protoform face.

Prowl nodded briskly. He had to get used to the concept of such a diverse and strange alliance. Organic beings, hybrids, former Decepticons, Decepticon pawns… Nothing was as what he remembered it being.

“Prowler?” Jazz prompted.

“I won’t shoot him,” he remarked dryly.

Jazz chuckled. “I had hoped you wouldn’t. It’s such a mess to clean up what’s left of you two when you’re done. And I’d take it personally.”

Prowl regarded him impassively for a moment, aware of the warning in the light words, then cracked a brief smile. Barricade was a shock-trooper and he knew him. He had read the recon files on him. A fight between them would be nasty. Very nasty. Shock-troopers were well-trained, ruthless, deadly.

Like Jazz, part of him whispered.

“Most likely,” he only commented.

And with that, it was settled.

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Barricade was a dark presence against the dusky sky. His red optics glowed dangerously, looking foreboding and lethal. Jazz transformed and joined his partner as he watched the night sky light up with a few stars. Ever since his close call with death and his subsequent reformatting of the old armor, Barricade had lost a few of the sharp edges, but he was still essentially the mech he had been before. Claws and all.

Out here, no one disturbed them. Far away from the base, yet close enough to be of help when needed. Barricade liked coming here because it gave them privacy, to be in their bipedal mode, to be who they were on a planet that didn’t know about the Cybertronian life forms.

“He knows,” the former Decepticon rumbled, stating a fact and not asking a question.

“Yes. He knew, Cade. Past knowledge. He found out throughout the war.”

Red optics flashed a little. There was a fire in there that promised death should the knowledge hurt them “And he let you live?”

“He trusted Prime after he discovered that Prime knew, too.”

“Foolish Autobots,” was the disdainful snort.

Jazz smiled a little. “Probably. For all Prowl knew I was a double agent. Or a spy. A traitor. But we were old friends. And Prime trusted me.”

Barricade narrowed his optics, clearly not agreeing with the reasoning. The Decepticons would have killed someone like Jazz found sneaking around with the enemy. It hadn’t been just once. They had tried to meet as often as was safe, and every little encounter had entailed an incredible risk.

A risk worth taking in both their minds.

“You gonna come back tonight?” Jazz asked casually.

“No.”

The word was grated out, final, not debatable.

Jazz let their shoulder armors touch, seeking the comfort of it. Barricade, as always, tolerated it. He would never say ‘enjoy’. Even if he did. Jazz had adopted some very human traits, but so far there had been no complaints from his bonded. Token grumbles, yes. But never an actual denial.

The silence between them was comfortable, their sparks entwining, exchanging what Barricade would also never confess to. A soft hum emanated from the Saleen, echoed by the silver mech, and Jazz dimmed his optics a little, concentrating only on the feel of his bonded. Talking to Prowl, relaying how he and Barricade had met, had kicked lose those memories, those feelings.

::Soft-sparked fool::

He pulled the other spark close, not to Share, just to hold. ::Yeah:: he whispered, unashamed.  
Everything about Prowl left him a bit off-balance, easily shot him back to moments that weren’t all of his choosing, though recalling their first meetings was pleasurable.

Barricade’s hum deepened, a reverberating resonance in their sparks and frame.

::Idiot:: he repeated, voice so very soft and unlike his usual demeanor.

 

They stayed like this for hours, aware of their surroundings, ready to separate should anything endanger them, but close enough and entwined enough to feel each other perfectly. Jazz had wrapped himself around the other spark, noting each pulse, each tremor. His spark felt so alive, so very wild, and Barricade was a perfect reflection of it.

Even if Prowl would never be able to handle this, Jazz didn’t care. He didn’t care at all.

And Barricade never had.

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Allowed to meet the humans for the first time, not just watch them, Prowl was baffled by the complexity of the organics, their different characters, their alieness. They adapted quickly to new circumstances, they were tough, they were resilient and resourceful, and the ones he had talked to saw alien mechanoid life forms as something very normal.

He spent some time with the human commander of the Nevada base, Captain Robert Epps. It was vital to be informed about such a highly placed officer. He had Prime’s trust and he functioned as their access to the military of the humans. Then there was the logistician, Lieutenant Trent DeMarco. If Prowl had requests, he would try to meet them supply-wise.

Sam Witwicky was next and looking into the brown eyes, Prowl almost flinched back. There was a strength in that gaze, in the whole body, speaking of a power he couldn’t fathom. Despite the comparatively small size, this was someone to be reckoned with, someone dangerous. Deceptive in appearance and able to bring him down to his knees.

Still, there was also an incredible openness to the young human. The smile was real. His words rang true. His touch was gentle. Prowl felt the presence near his spark, but it didn’t poke or prod. It didn’t do more than introduce itself, acquaint him with the strangeness of Sam Witwicky.

“You can read my mind?”

Sam shrugged. “Not like every thought. I can feel you. I can feel everyone if I want to. My shields are good, but I can’t tune everyone out absolutely. You’re new and it’s curiosity coupled with needing to get used to your… emissions.”

Prowl frowned. He didn’t like that. It sounded like a great security risk.

“Unless you want me in your mind, I’m not going to pick up thoughts, Prowl,” the human reassured him. “And it’s a migraine for me anyway. Backlash is hell.”

He regarded the small organic, fascinated and somehow afraid in one.

 

Jazz had taken him aside after that first round of introductions and told him that Sam was very special in many ways, and one was his bond to Bumblebee. Prowl had nearly off-lined from shock. It wasn’t the interspecies relationship. He didn’t care who sought what from whom as long as it was mutual. It was the fact that it was a bond! A bond!

“Sam’s mind is unique. His genetic make-up changed. You want the facts in detail, ask Ratchet.”

He would. It was important.

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When he approached the technopath two days later it was because of what he had read in the file. It was because of what Sam had done already for the mechs under Prime’s command. It was because Sam himself had said he could enter a mind.

Prowl had weighed his options, had seen the positive and the negative, had balanced hope against fear, and finally his need had won.

Sam’s eyes were wide with surprise, then he shook his head. “I doubt it’ll work, Prowl. Really. Your memories were destroyed.”

“Maybe. But maybe I just lost access to those parts. No one can tell because my memory core is a mess. You can help..”

“I’m not some kind of repair bot, Prowl. It’s not how this works.”

“Please, try.”

“Prowl…”

The strategist knelt down, still looming over the smaller life form. “I do this willingly. You have access to whatever you need. Please, Sam.”

The human sighed. “You have no idea what you’re asking for.”

“I do. I read the files.”

“And I know yours. Why would you want someone poking around your innermost thoughts? It’s not like you.”

Prowl smiled humorlessly. “Caution would bid me to get to know you first, study you, but I read Ratchet’s files on you. The Prime trusts you. You already proved yourself over and over to him.”

“But you don’t know me personally,” Sam countered.

“No.”

“Still you want to do this?”

A nod.

“Let me think about it, okay? This isn’t just something I do on the fly, Prowl. I need back-up, an anchor, and you need to be monitored.”

Prowl agreed. He saw the logic in it and it spoke of the maturity of the human that he didn’t just ask him to lay down and let’s get to it.

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As not otherwise expected, there were protests from Ratchet, which he countered calmly and logically. He was healed. He was stable. His spark and mind were strong once more. Prime wasn’t very fond of the idea either, but he listened to the logic and he consulted with the technopath. Bumblebee said nothing, just stood behind his partner like a steady support and it was exactly what he represented. Prowl remembered the scout from Cybertron, his potential, his youth. The potential had only grown and the youth had made way for a maturity shaped by a civil war that had cost too much.

“It’s my free choice, Prime,” he told the Autobot leader, optics firmly on the taller Autobot’s face. “If Sam can help me recover at least some of my memories, it might be worth it.”

Sam looked doubtful. As did Ratchet. But there was little they could argue without actually trying what Prowl wanted, and since it really was his choice there was nothing they could add.

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Prowl had no idea what he expected. Maybe pain. Maybe discomfort. Maybe the sensation of something alien touching his mind and spark. What did touch him was gentle, warm, reassuring, and so very… Cybertronian, he almost gasped.

::Training:: Sam told him, a feather-light presence in his systems.

::By Barricade?::

Prowl couldn’t fathom that a shock-trooper had taught this human, had given him such gentleness.

::First Barricade. Then Bumblebee. Then the others. And always back to Barricade. I need his… coldness, his willingness to go where the others won’t. I need him to strike at me, to be ruthless. It’s a training that never stops. I always learn.::

Prowl nodded to himself, though his physical form was currently suspended on one of Ratchet’s tables. He caught small echoes of Sam, saw how different he was and still so very much the same. He felt like… kin.

::I won’t harm you:: the technopath promised.

Prowl believed him.

Sam’s presence increased, wrapped around him, and then part of him slipped inside, into memory circuits, into his core, and Prowl gave an exclamation of surprise. There was no pain, just the foreign access that his systems didn’t fight. Ratchet had made sure that his defenses were low. They didn’t want Sam to battle against those particular programs.

Prowl felt himself slipping along the connection, as if he was entering his own mind, looking around. And he was. He didn’t see much, though.

Sam touched, probed and prodded, took closer looks and went on. He said nothing, worked silently and efficiently, and Prowl’s respect rose. Now and then the human twitched away, then just steeled himself and delved into what had apparently hurt or shocked him.

When he finally pulled back, the presence wavered and Prowl felt concern rise.

::Sam?::

::I’m fine:: The mind-voice sounded composed, but Prowl noticed tremors of stress anyway.

Sam started to retreat, caressing his spark, calming what had to be slight shockwaves from the continued invasion. Prowl hadn’t even noticed. It was such an intimate, gentle gesture, he felt his systems relax automatically. Sam’s touch was professional, but not distant or cold.

Then he was alone.

And he felt very much at peace.

On-lining his optics he took a nano-second to check where he was according to memory, then he sat up. Swiveling his head to look at Sam his concern rose. He knew the human was prone to suffering from migraines if he stressed his mind and apparently he had. Eyes closed, head on his pulled-up knees, Sam was tended to by his partner. Bumblebee’s crouching form almost hid all of the technopath. Suddenly the human lifted his head and Prowl shivered under the intense gaze.

So small.

So powerful.

No one to be underestimated.

Trained by a shock-trooper, protected by one, anchored to one. Anchored to his bonded partner.

::I’m sorry, Prowl:: the familiar voice said softly.

Sam never moved his lips. Prowl shivered a little. This was and wasn’t like his kind’s form of non-verbal communication, sending data streams, talking directly. It was alien and still familiar. Sam had done it so often before, his touch was kindred.

::There is nothing left. Not even a scrap::

And he felt echoes of the black abyss the destroyed memories had left behind. An abyss Sam had looked into and tried to find pieces of the former memories in. Nothing. Nothing at all had remained.

“Thank you,” he said out loud, voice rough.

Ratchet made an impatient noise, giving the technopath a glare. Sam smiled a little in return.

“There is nothing,” he told the others who hadn’t been able to listen in. “It’s gone.”

“I told you so before,” the medic grumbled. “But you wouldn’t listen!”

“It was the confirmation of a first scan,” Sam corrected. “A second opinion.”

Ratchet didn’t look pleased, probably because of the backlash for Sam. Prowl slid off the table, remarkably stable on his legs. At Ratchet’s inquiring look he steadily met the blue optics. He didn’t say anything, but Ratchet didn’t back down easily either.

“I’m fine,” he finally grated out.

“No, you’re not, but you’re also not confined to med bay,” was the terse reply.

“Good.” With that Prowl left med bay, looking at no one, needing to be alone.

 

Sam gazed after the protoform, sad eyes taking in the tension in the shoulders, the whole stride. He had done his best and seen only… nothing. Prowl’s last memories were completely erased. There were no back-ups, no chance to get even a fragment back.

“Sam?”

“It’s okay, Ratchet,” he answered automatically, accepting a powerbar from the medic. “It wasn’t as bad as other scans I did. Just intense.”

“Still, get rest. I knew why I didn’t want you here,” he continued, sounding displeased.

Sam gave the much larger mech a brief smile. He didn’t mind Bumblebee’s hovering when they were finally alone for Sam to recover. Prowl had been a very different mind to touch, different from everyone else he had ever been close to. The Constructicons had been damaged minds, but not as near death as Prowl. Prowl had a mind that looked like the moon’s surface: littered with craters where something had struck or been ripped out. There were deep chasms, dark holes and nothing that could be done to repair it all. Sam had seen the last moments in Prowl’s memory, a fight for survival. He had been alone, separated from his team, but there was no memory of where Sunstreaker had gone off to.

The heavy damage had been painful to see. He had felt the desperation to survive, how Prowl had launched himself into space, losing consciousness, wrapping all he had around his very core to protect only that.

Then nothing.

Sam leaned against his partner, who hadn’t moved. Bumblebee cupped him close, an unusual position for them. Physical closeness like this, so intense and so human in its expression, was rare. Sam would lean against, caress, pat or brush over Bumblebee’s armor, but he had only once or twice really sought full physical contact.

“Couldn’t help him,” he murmured.

“What he suffered was more than you ever encountered. I didn’t believe he would be able to recover anything, Sam.”

“Yeah.” Sam closed his eyes, face pressed against the cool metal. “I knew. But part of me hoped.”

“We all hoped.”

He couldn’t help everyone, and with the Constructicons there had been similar fates. Long Haul had suffered hard drive failures and erased memories, too. But in his case he didn’t really know it. Prowl knew everything up to a point, then nothing. And within the nothing there had been the information they had all sought: where was Sunstreaker?

Gentle fingers ran over his spine. Sam was tired, his head ached, though the migraine had been averted. Ratchet had told him to eat, which he had done, but he felt reluctant to leave the room. He felt heavy, drained, different than throughout other times he had been in so deep. Bumblebee didn’t do anything else but anchor him with his touch and by opening his mind. Sam felt the so achingly familiar spark and he lost himself in the sensation of touching something healthy and whole. Bumblebee carried his own baggage, had had his share of torture and pain, had seen too many die, but to Sam the spark was everything. It was what kept him in touch with himself, what put the world back into focus.

Bumblebee dropped his last shields and Sam shivered, then let his mind fall into the safety net. His eyes closed and he relaxed his muscles. Bumblebee sent Ratchet their need for complete privacy and the medic acknowledged.

It was safe to let go.

 

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Prowl had spent some time alone. He needed it to think, to come to terms with the final truth about his memories: they were gone. At least after a specific point. No one and nothing could bring them back.

Had he erased them himself? As a last effort to keep them from the enemy? Or had his last moments before taking on the transition mode been so terrifying, he had erased that horror? Prowl had always seen himself as a strong, stable mech able to withstand anything. Maybe he had broken?

Had he fallen into enemy hands? Had his memories been manipulated? What if something had been done and he now carried sleeper commands that not even a technopath could find?

Ratchet had found no foreign intrusions, but Soundwave was renowned for not leaving a trace, for being the perfect manipulator.

It was painful for Prowl to think about all of this. He was a warrior. He was strong. He couldn’t think of himself as broken or missing vital pieces. Maybe that had been his intent, to end it, when he had launched himself off into space. Something had happened and he hadn’t been able to withstand it, by enemy hands or not.

So maybe he was a coward.

Still, that went against everything he believed in. He couldn’t be that mech. He couldn’t have left comrades and a team, dishonored those who had fallen in battle. That wasn’t him!

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When he finally returned to the main base it was already near dawn and rain had set in. Big fat drops were splashing onto the ground, onto him, running in thick rivulets down his protoform. The base wasn’t as busy at night due to the humans’ sleep cycles, but it was far from quiet. Leaving a trail of water he returned to his assigned quarters. He flexed his fingers, feeling the need for an alt mode rise. He would have to talk to Ratchet about this.

Carefully sending a request to Bumblebee he got a brief reply. The scout wasn’t on-line, the answer was automatic, and Prowl wisely pulled back. At least the answer had confirmed that Sam was alright, which was what he had wanted to know.

Prowl accessed the base’s mainframe and went through the files he had already downloaded. He had yet to understand so much and each day was a learning experience. He adjusted, but it was too slow for his liking. Knowing that there was no going back to who he had been he would have to work on becoming what was needed. He had been one of Prime’s inner circle, placed highly in the command structure.

He would regain that place. He would be useful once more. What he missed would be bridged. Gaps could be filled. He would have a new life and new memories.

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When Ratchet cleared him to transscan, Prowl had never been so glad to finally be allowed to take his alt mode. It felt just wrong to be in these strange environs and not try to blend in. He was a protoform and he stood out like a sore thumb. That not everyone was constantly staring at him was attributed to the humans’ acceptance of their alien friends’ exterior looks, but it was immediately clear who the ‘new guy’ was.

Transscanning meant Prowl needed to be outside, to see the vehicle he would take as his disguise, and walking around looking as he did didn’t help. So under the cover of darkness he approached a highway and hid in the shadows.

The car he chose to fit his size, frame and his whole mind-set came by only ten minutes into the waiting game. The transscan was completed under two seconds and Prowl felt his basic form expand, felt armor form, felt his whole being stretch and take on his alternate mode. Transforming out of his new alt mode he flexed five-fingered, black colored hands. The whole basic structure underneath a gleaming white armor was black, some areas a dark gray, giving him a monochromatic appearance since his new armor was pure white. The two doors sat on hinges like small wings on his back, not unlike Bumblebee’s, and his shoulders featured two missile-like additions. Like Jazz the alt mode’s front section was showing on his chest.

He could have adjusted the vehicular mode to mirror the one he had scanned, a police patrol car, but for now he was satisfied with simply having a transformation. Fine-tuning would follow. Not yet. Maybe later. Maybe just to piss Barricade off.

The normally more reserved mech almost grinned maliciously. He and Jazz’s spark-bonded had yet to meet, but he knew it would be an explosive alliance.

Transforming once more he drove back toward the base, not much later joined by a familiar silver Solstice. The white Dodge Charger acknowledged the other’s presence, but he didn’t fall for the teasing hum. He caught a new signature that was following them at a distance, a signature not hidden. It was almost a challenge and he was ready to take it on.

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::Cade:: Jazz admonished.

::What?:: the mech in question snapped.

Jazz chuckled. He was accompanying Prowl back to the base, admiring the gleaming white alt mode. It looked nifty. Of course, if Prowl chose to add the police decals…

::It’s only a cover:: Barricade growled, irritated for no reason he could discern.

::One you like::

::It’s handy::

::And you like it::

Barricade refused to answer.

::Cause you’re the bad element. You scare the crap out of humans up to no good::

::Shut up, Autobot:: Jazz had been watching way too much television again.

The Saleen gained a little on the two other cars and Barricade was pleased to feel the renewed scans from Prowl. He wasn’t hiding anything. He was actually feeling very provocative today.

Jazz only sent a sigh, but an amused one. He added a trickle of tolerance, which had Barricade rumble darkly.

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“Is he enjoying himself?” Prowl asked evenly, an edge of sarcasm bleeding in.

“You have no idea.”

The Charger hummed in annoyance. “And he is really your bonded?”

“Yep. No doubt.”

Prowl muttered to himself. Maybe this was the first faulty spark-bond. How could Jazz…? Then again, they might just fit. Jazz was annoying enough; Barricade was… a Decepticon. A Decepticon shock-trooper and an Autobot saboteur specialist, from different factions, with different backgrounds and training, and still alike enough to find what so very, very few could ever hope to experience.

He pushed that thought aside.

The car behind them suddenly gained speed at an alarming rate and Prowl tensed as the police cruiser flew past them. Red and blue lights flashed, provocative and taunting. The siren whoo-whooped.

Prowl hissed, reining in his response. Insolent little…

Jazz’s laugh was filled with careless fun and the acceptance of a challenge. The Solstice revved his engine and then tore after the black-and-white, sand flying. Prowl could only watch and mentally shake his head as the two so different -- apparently different -- mechs disappeared in a cloud of dust.

Keeping perfectly within the speed limit the Dodge Charger took the long way back to base. His scanners were still peeled for signs of the two other mechs, but they had long since left his range.

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“Get used to it,” was Ironhide’s rumble when he told the massive Autobot about the incident almost a day later.

“Have you?” he challenged.

To a Decepticon among them? To one who had killed their kind and enjoyed it? To a spark-bond? To seeing the expression in Jazz’s optics? The gentleness and trust, coupled with something so strong, so deep, there was no word for it in any language?

Yes, Ironhide had, Prowl realized as he watched the other’s features shift briefly. Ironhide didn’t say a word, just rumbled more, then left.

He had gotten used to a Decepticon in their midst.

Prowl was stunned. Ironhide… the Ironhide he knew… the same mech who had never given that much… trust… to a Decepticon before. No, not trust. Barricade had been given a chance and Ironhide evaluated every encounter. So far, the tolerance outweighed the suspicion and paranoia.

And Ironhide had entrusted the technopath’s training to this Decepticon. Sam had come out alright. Strong and self-confident. Jazz was still his old self; maybe more annoying than Prowl remembered.

So he had to get used to it.

Prowl shook his head, unable to wrap his injured mind around so many changes. He had to give this time – and some heavy tolerance.

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Getting used to Earth grew less and less difficult with each week he was on-line. Prowl found that despite the humans’ sometimes illogical behavior, their disregard for certain rules and regulations, they weren’t so different from his past friends, his team, his people. Well, they were different, but not badly so.

He spent a long time watching the military unit, studying their tactics and strategies. He was a good observer, so he did that: observe. When Captain Epps finally approached him with the question if he wanted to just gawk or join in, he had taken the offer gladly. New tactics were developed and Prowl found he adapted some of his techniques to the humans’, and vice versa. He was pleased to note how fast they learned and how quickly they incorporated new things.

That humans were fundamentally different was another matter. They were organic, didn’t live the same span as his own kind, were smaller, had a completely different culture… it was driving Prowl crazy now and then.

But he adjusted.

He had to.

Prime had given him small tasks in the beginning and by and by it grew more. Ratchet still checked him weekly, commended him on his energon levels, but always told him not to disregard them now. He might be back and feel great, but that didn’t mean he was one hundred percent.

Prowl knew he wasn’t. Chunks were missing.

Jazz was the same pain as he always had been, but the easy, laid-back mech helped him immensely. He pulled him out of his wandering mind, he pushed him to new limits, he roused his temper. It all worked.

Barricade was a shadow he couldn’t catch. He seemed to move in and out of the base unseen and whenever Prowl thought he had him, there was nothing. It was a game of cat and mouse, though the mouse was vicious and sneaky and devious-minded. Jazz just grinned at him.

Contact with Sideswipe had been withheld until Ratchet had given Prowl the all-clear, that he had healed. As much as he could heal anyway. The memory chunks that were missing were gone permanently. No repair could bring them back. He had to live with that and he would. The alternative was not really a viable one.

Optimus Prime had allowed Sideswipe to return to the base, but only under guard from Ironhide and Arcee. He wouldn’t take a single step without supervision and he was almost docile. Prowl watched his arrival from a corner of the main hangar, curious to see his old team mate again, but the knowledge that he had no information about his twin was sitting heavily on him.

But he wanted this. He had asked to be the one to tell Sideswipe. He had been the team leader. He had been responsible.

Sideswipe was led to the room that had been chosen for the two Autobots to meet. Alone. Prowl wanted to be alone with the other and no one was to listen in. This was a very private and personal moment.

Optimus Prime had understood and while Ironhide had grumbled, he had relented.

Following the three mechs, Prowl reached the chosen room just as the door closed after Sideswipe. He nodded at Arcee and Ironhide, then hesitated one last second. Finally he steeled his nerves and walked inside.

Blue optics, alive with hope and filled with dread at the same time, fixed on Prowl’s own.

“Prowl,” Sideswipe stuttered.

Prowl read even more in the twin’s stance. Pain, loss, hope, terror, need…

“Hello, Sideswipe,” he said softly.

The silver mech fidgeted.

“I know what happened,” the strategist added, anticipating that question already. “And I’m not angry. I understand your reasons.”

“I never wanted to cause harm,” Sideswipe said in a small voice.

“You wanted to know.”

A nod.

Prowl gazed at the younger mech, remembering him and his twin. Those two could be a pain in the aft. They could go on your nerves, wreck your processor, and they drove you over the edge. Their pranks had been every commander’s horror, but in the battle field they were professionals. Warriors of a high caliber, fast, furious, a force to be reckoned with. Prowl couldn’t see one without the other.

Now there was only one and he would have had the clue to Sunstreaker’s fate, but he didn’t know. He no longer knew.

“I can’t remember, Sideswipe.”

The optics widened, blue light flaring in disbelief and horror. For a moment the face was young, young and innocent and so shocked. Hope bled out of every line and turned into something far more vicious.

“The damage I took was too great. My memory circuits were partially erased. What I can remember is our assignment, you and Sunstreaker… But that’s where it ends. I’m sorry.”

Sideswipe made a frightened little noise. He shook his head, whole body trembling.

“No…” he protested. “No, no, no….”

“I wish I could remember what happened to Sunstreaker. I can’t. I tried and Ratchet checked my processor. There is nothing. I went as far as having Sam scan me. Nothing at all.”

“Cybertron, no… You were with him, Prowl! When we were separated his last communication was that he was with you!”

“Sideswipe… I’m very, very sorry.”

There was a moment of utter stillness, then the silver mech fell to his knees, emitting a soft, keening noise of mourning. Prowl was torn, unable to give in to either motion: go to Sideswipe or leave the grieving mech alone. When haunted optics looked up, filled with despair, he finally walked over to his former team member, placing a heavy hand on one shoulder. Prowl went down on his knees, meeting the flickering optics of the suffering mech.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Sideswipe dimmed his optics. “He’s alive,” he managed. “He has to be.”

Prowl didn’t want to argue. He had survived. Sideswipe had survived. It was entirely possible; just like death was possible. Maybe Sideswipe’s twinned spark could feel his brother’s continued existence. What if Sunstreaker was out there? What if he had managed to escape and gone into the same deep stasis as Prowl? What if he was lost in the vastness of space? What if the enemy had him, keeping him alive just for the sports of it? What if the one they might one day find was nothing but a shell of the Sunstreaker he remembered?

He said nothing of his thoughts. Sideswipe must have had them, too. From inside his sleek, silver form came low moans. A mind haunted by his brother’s unknown fate. Prowl wished he could have given Sideswipe peace, one way or the other, but it wasn’t to be.

Prowl just waited, feeling the other mech calm down. Sideswipe sat back, heaving a rattling sigh. The two mechs regarded each other, unspoken words passing between them. Both damaged, both having lost something very close and personal. In Prowl’s case it was forever. Sideswipe had hope.

It fused them together in a way. That and their past relationship as team mates and friends. Prowl rested his forehead against Sideswipe’s.

“You’re not alone, Sides,” he said softly.

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Sam had kept a technopathic eye on their newest addition and he was happy to note that Prowl was getting better. His self-confidence grew and with it the unrest. He needed something to do, to be useful, and his mind was regaining its orderly, logical thinking.

So disorderly, illogic, irrational and quite frankly human behavior confused him sometimes. Sam watched it with a smile and the knowledge that it got better every day, too.

Ratchet had told him to take it easy.

He did. Sam didn’t plan on permanent headaches. Neither did Bumblebee.

What worried Sam was Sideswipe. The silver mech had been strangely silent and withdrawn ever since his private conversation with Prowl. Sam felt waves of darker emotions coming from him and sometimes it hurt. He was torn between ignoring it all because it was a private matter, and simply going to Sideswipe and see if he could help.

He didn’t have the connection to the mech as he had to others. He had been a new addition, like Hot Rod or Arcee, but also someone who kept to himself. Sometimes his more boisterous nature broke though and Bumblebee had told his partner a few things about Sideswipe. The Sideswipe of before.

Sam sighed softly.

::You can’t help everyone, Sam::

::I know, Bee.::

Sam ran a hand over the smooth yellow fender of the Camaro parked next to him. ::I just feel like I’m the only one who notices::

::You’re not. Prowl knows what this did to Sideswipe and they were on the same team. They both lost and both need to work through it.::

::And I wouldn’t be helping::

::Prowl trusted you for this one task. Leave them to heal on their own now::

Sam nodded to himself.

 

Two weeks later Sideswipe left for the east coast again. He would meet up with Maxx Racing once more and stay with the racing team. Prime hadn’t objected.

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Meeting the best-kept secret of the Autobots and their allies had been something high on Prowl’s list, but he had yet to get a chance to introduce himself to Will Lennox. Of course the human knew him; Ratchet had told Prowl of Lennox’s assistance in repairing his protoform. Still, no formal introduction had been made.

“He’s well-protected,” he remarked toward Prime.

“For a reason.”

“The files claim he isn’t the Allspark.”

“And he isn’t,” the Autobot leader confirmed. “But others might think so. Soundwave tried to take him and it was a close call. It was also a warning we heed. We still don’t know much about him, aside from what each evolutionary step shows us. No one can foretell what will happen in the future.”

“Because you can’t scan him.”

Prime nodded. “That and other reasons. Will is always evolving, with or without outside influence. We protect him. We help him.”

Prowl let his optics sweep over the main floor. He stood proud and tall, sure of his place among these allied troops. Prime had yet to assign him anything specific, but just being here was reassurance enough. Prowl had spent time reviewing strategies, had checked on Ironhide’s security network and been soundly impressed, and he had learned about the humans’ military that was assigned to the base.

There was a lack of coordination and he had brought it up already, especially now that the Ark was in her finishing stages. More plans had been made to position early warning stations throughout this solar system and Prowl itched to put in his ideas. What he needed was the last bit of information, about Will Lennox, his capabilities, the dangers, his powers.

Optimus looked at him, a knowing expression in his optics, then invited him to follow.

“You’ll never know everything about him,” the taller mech said as they walked.

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

Prowl considered the question. “We never understood the Allspark.”

“He isn’t the Allspark, Prowl.”

He nodded. “But he seems to harbor some of its power. I don’t believe the Allspark can ever be destroyed, Prime. Its energy was dispersed and some found its way into new shapes.”

Blue optics regarded him steadily. “Neither of the ones touched by the Allspark have its power, alone or combined.”

“They preserve something eternal, Prime.”

Optimus was silent, never breaking his stride. “I believe so, too, Prowl,” he murmured after a moment. “I believe so, too.”

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Knowing what he would see, reading about the accident that had changed a normal human into a kind of hybrid, was one thing. Looking at the 6’4” tall organic was something completely different.

Prowl’s optics were fixed on the string of runes moving over the soft skin, the ancient glyphs of cosmic code, and his mind flashed back to the one time he had stood in the presence of the Allspark. It had been awe-inspiring, humbling, showing him infinity and power beyond his wildest imaginations.

The Allspark was gone, but this human had somehow merged with a shard of it and had become… something else.

He had actually taken a step back in rising fear as the old code showed more and more.

Will Lennox appeared like a normal male of his kind, with the addition of the glyphs, but there was something about his energy field. It was strong, dense… condensed. It was ancient. His sensors picked it up, compared it to the sensation of the Allspark, and came up negative. Lennox carried himself with an air of command, his military heritage, and he wasn’t afraid to face mechs several times his size.

“Prowl?” Optimus Prime said softly.

He blinked, stunned optics falling on his leader.

“I… don’t know,” he stammered.

His reaction was extreme, he knew it, and he blamed his still recovering spark for it. But there was fear, coupled with respect, and the fear disturbed him.

This was the one to be protected, the one Soundwave had been after because he had believed and maybe still did that the hybrid could revive dead shells. Ratchet had firmly told him that there was no indication Will could.

As an Autobot Prowl respected all sentient life, would protect the humans -- on their team, allied to them, or innocents. But two were special. Will Lennox and Sam Witwicky.

Ironhide made an impatient noise, coupled with a warning. “You gonna freak, get it over with.”  
Prowl pulled himself together and inclined his head. “I apologize, Will,” he said formally.

It got him a careless shrug. “You’re not the first. It apparently gets to everyone.”

And to you, Prowl thought.

It was in the file. A file so well-protected no one had any outside access to it, which was why Soundwave hadn’t been able to gather the intel he had needed to pull off the kidnapping.

“You’ll get used to it,” the human added.

Prowl was certain that something was connecting Lennox to Ironhide, especially after he had seen the weapons expert’s name etched into the human’s wrist. Like a permanent tattoo, a bracelet, where all the other runes moved. Since Ironhide was the last mech to talk openly about anything personal and since relationships between humans, well, Allspark-changed humans, and his kind were apparently extraordinary, Prowl let the matter rest.

“You’re staring again,” Jazz stage-whispered, elbowing him hard.

Prowl shot him a dark look.

Lennox smiled. “That’s usually the, very long, first reaction. The second is something I want to prevent. I’m not the Allspark, Prowl.”

“I’ve been told. I know,” he answered stiffly.

“Good. Whatever you think, it’s not even close. I’m not a circus act either, so if you want to know more, ask Jazz or Ratchet. Or Optimus. No demonstrations unless you volunteer for a training exercise.”

Prowl nodded, accepting the words. He wouldn’t pin any kind of label on this human. “The reason I wanted to meet you, Will, was to thank you. You helped save my spark.”

Lennox shook his head. “No. Ratchet did. You did it yourself because you didn’t give up. I merely welded some tubes together.”

“You still have my gratitude.”

The hybrid shrugged once more, smiling as he met the serious optics. “If you think so. You’re welcome.”

Prowl gazed into eyes that had seen so much more than he probably ever would, counting millennia of civil war. Will Lennox had no official rank among the human military. He had no rank concerning the allied forces. He had no rank among the Autobots. But his presence was commanding. His own kind listened to him; he was called to advise, even to command a mission. Prime respected him deeply, as did the others. Not because of his forced hybrid status; not because of the glyphs. Because he had proven himself.

“I’m looking forward to getting to know you, Will Lennox,” he said softly.

“Likewise, Prowl.”

The smile was open and real. Prowl answered it with a cautious one of his own.

He still couldn’t shake the deep-set awe, the respect, the slight fear. This was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg and there would be more. Prowl was sure of it.

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Tom Banachek looked at the black and white mech that had arrived with the latest transport flight from Nellis to the Arctic base, noting the clear line between black body and white armor. He had been kept up to date in the weeks it had taken Ratchet to bring the dying protoform back among the living, and he had been pleasantly surprised to hear that one, Prowl had survived and two, he was one of the higher officers.

He looked proud, standing tall and almost to attention, a clear contrast to the mechs Banachek had met before. Here was a military officer, one who took his duties very seriously.

Prime had suggested that Prowl, as their tactician and military strategist, work with Banachek at Project. Project handled all kinds of liaisons, was the core unit of the human military that would both prepare the world for the day the mechs would be known and also obscure their presence until then. Prowl had expressed his interest and who was Banachek to refuse?

“Welcome to Project, Prowl,” he greeted the newcomer. “I’m looking forward to our cooperation.”

People walked around him and only Banachek’s aid had been present for the introductions, then the woman had been called away.

“As am I, Mr. Banachek,” Prowl replied, sounding formal and just a little bit stiff. “I’ve reviewed your organization, the way it handles Autobot matters, the reconstruction of the Ark, and the insertion of Cybertronian technology into the human world. I believe I can offer some new ideas and assessments.”

Banachek smiled. He had been given a quick run-down on what to expect from Prowl by Jazz. The first lieutenant had made it quite clear that Prowl was, for all his laid-back manner, his patience and his adherence to logic, rather uptight and socially inept when facing others. He would thaw after a while, but one had to suffer through this first.

“I’m all ears,” Banachek only replied.

And he was, among other things. Like the interest he felt rising at what Prowl’s permanent status at the Arctic base would change for them all. Banachek was also looking forward to the meeting between Prowl and Tony Stark, who had a meeting scheduled over the development of the Stark Industries satellites to help surround Earth with a defensive network. Banachek didn’t know if Stark would drive Prowl insane first, or if the mech could keep an upper hand against the industrialist billionaire.

Yes, it would be fun. And matters at the base would be far from quiet in the future.


End file.
